Phone Around the World for Free

HotTelephone's phone-over-Net service goes international, but you'll pay a non-cash fee.

Tom Spring, PC World

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The service is not unique, but HotTelephone is the first to offer free calling anywhere on the planet. All you need is a Net-enabled PC, speakers, and a microphone, and tolerance for less-than-perfect sound quality.

Here's the catch: You must choose from three advertising-supported tiers of service.

Free Speech for a Price

One call lets you make unlimited phone calls within the U.S. for the price of a banner ad displayed in your browser window.

The second plan lets you make an unlimited number of free, 10-minute phone calls to any of 23 countries. You're disconnected after 10 minutes, but you can call repeatedly. Advertisers sponsor only 10 minutes of gab time per call, says Donald Williams, HotTelephone's founder and chief executive officer.

Some of the free countries include Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Spain, Ireland, France, and South Korea.

The third option lets you call anywhere through a somewhat-convoluted sponsor program. To make free long-distance calls from your PC outside of the 24 supported countries, you must earn free calling minutes.

You earn free minutes by viewing online commercials (one ad is worth two minutes), by shopping at select online stores (every dollar spent earns one minute), and through a referral scheme (one referral earns five minutes). Or you can buy the minutes from HotTelephone.

Chatting with Bytes and Bits

To get started, simply visit the HotTelephone Web site and answer a personal demographics questionnaire. Next, follow the straightforward online instructions to download a 365 KB Surf&Call Java applet from VocalTech. Then enter the number you want to call.

It's no surprise that the sound quality of HotTelephone's beta version is inferior to that of conventional telephone service. My phone call to Ireland was mostly annoying. I enjoyed better sound by using competing services by Net2Phone, a toll service; and domestic calls through dialpad.com, a free service. Note, though, that Net2Phone and dialpad.com offer cellular quality when conditions are optimum.

Williams blames Internet traffic for awkward delays in transmission. These issues and voice quality will become less problematic as overall Internet bandwidth increases and the HotTelephone's network matures, he says.

HotTelephone competes with pay voice-over-Internet protocol firms like Net2Phone, WebPhone.com, and deltathree.com, which each charge about three cents per minute.

HotTelephone also competes with free services, including dialpad.com, Innofone's Hot Caller service, Callrewards.com, and CallMeFree.com. All support their services with advertisements.

HotTelephone partnered with Cypress Telecommunications, which specializes in international circuit switch telephone calls. HotTelephone will handle the Internet telephony leg of each phone call placed through its Web site.

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