About four years ago, I started using a primitive form of VoIP. A company in the US called DialPad.com introduced a system whereby users could log onto their web site and make free phone calls using VoIP to any US and Canadian telephone number. Back then, I was calling the US from the UK for perhaps an hour ot two every day to speak to my then fiancee, now my wife.
There are perhaps seven telephone companies in the UK now who offer low cost calls by dialling a prefix and routing the call through their networks. Back then there were only two, OneTel and Quip, but they enabled me to call the USA for 3p a minute (4.5c).
At the time I had a 56k dial-up connection with AOL in the UK, who used to charge ?14.99 per month subscription with unlimited freefone (0800) access. It was possible to sign on to AOL, using my unlimited free time, log on to Dialpad.com and then using my soundcard and a headset, place a free call to my fiancee. The service was totally reliable but with a data rate of only 40kbps, the sound quality was pretty poor. However, I could and did save a fortune, and the quality was just enough to carry on a conversation. 3p a minute, 120 minutes a day, 30 days a month worked out at ?108 a month (about US$160), so you can see the savings. I was paying my AOL sub whether I made phone calls or not so that was a fixed expense every month!
The system worked, even allowing for the bandwidth of the site and the data transfer rate of my narrowband dial-up connection.
I now have broadband and would love to try the system again to call my parents-in-law in New York, but Dialpad no longer seem to operate this service. Perhaps it was so popular that they couldn't handle the demand. Perhaps once it cought on, they started charging. I'm not sure...since Theresa came to the UK in 2000, I haven't needed the service.
Like many things, something that's free and a good idea catches on and then becomes a chargeable proposition. I have seen one or two other companies offering a similar service, but their prices exceed what I'd pay for a cheap 3p/min call so there is no incentive to compare against regular telephone networks.
With video-on-demand and broadband media catching on now that DSL and cable connections are starting to catch up with narrow-band internet use, I'm suprised that VoIP as an alternative to PSTN isn't catching on. The infrastructure is in place and if Dialpad did it four years ago, then the software must be out there too.
Internet phones used to be advertised and sold left right and centre, but you just don't see them any more. Phone Dialler used to be a standard accessory in Windows for what it was worth and with all the 'goodies' in XP, you would have thought that someone would come up with a VoIP 'telephone' service that would allow you to use the PC as a phone 'out of the box' so to speak.
