Comments on: Voice, Now Nearly Free

By: Gizmo Project’s “All Calls Free” - Will It Drive User Recruitment? : voiceontheweb.biz

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:27:50 +0000

[...] Malik, in “Voice Now Nearly Free“, speculates on the business model: “ “This free voice movement had me thinking - [...]

By: www.Xabout.com » Use your high-speed Internet connection to make all

www.Xabout.com » Use your high-speed Internet connection to make all — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 02:30:47 +0000

[...] GigaOM ” Voice, Now Nearly Free … turn of Gizmo Project to offer almost free voice calls to the old PSTN numbers. … This free voice movement had me thinking what kind of a loss is … [...]

By: Geek News Central

Geek News Central — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 05:08:03 +0000

GNC-2006-07-21 #189…

Wow late start tonight and a caffeinated Todd takes you through some awesome tech info, there are some gems near the end of the show and you better let me know what you think on the voice mail hot line…

By: PanMan

PanMan — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 12:45:26 +0000

There is a pretty big “if”, that is mentioned but quickly overlooked: the people that you call need to be on Gizmo as well. So no free phonecall’s to your mom, unless she installs it as well. And if you both have it installed anyway, why not call PC 2 PC, which was free anyways. I guess they take the few cents for the free calls as subscriber aquistion costs, for another install.
With the Skype deal, this isn’t the case: here you can call all US numbers (but only from the US).
Voipbuster used to have free calls to a lot of countries (and still does!), but now you need to deposit $10, which lasts for 3 months, at most.

By: CP

CP — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:49:52 +0000

Talking of innovative business models for VOIP… check out voipuser.org

They offer various categories of UK DIDs (regular phone numbers on which you can receive incoming VOIP calls) - free to their users. When PSTN callers calls such DIDs, their carrier would pay some termination fee to voipuser.org - so no extra cost to the caller or the receiver.

VOIPuser.org has created a pool from such termination fees received and allows their users to use the pool to call regular PSTN nos. in 30 countries!! So essentially… free calling world-wide for VOIP users.

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 20:03:36 +0000

DG Lewis, you are mistaking not caring for not knowing.

By: DG Lewis

DG Lewis — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 19:39:04 +0000

AOL is giving away free dial-in numbers; I tried it and found it worse than useless. Over the course of a week, I got about 10 calls to the number — before I’d told anyone about it. All wrong numbers, of course. I think AOL doesn’t understand the concept of number aging.

By: The Fine Print

The Fine Print — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:02:29 +0000

The fine print in this offering is significant. The people you can call for free need to be registered with Gizmo (and have downloaded the client). If this promo works, a not small fraction of the free world users will be placing calls via IP, with no transport to Gizmo at all.

By: Shri

Shri — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:01:09 +0000

Actually, Aswath, that's not really accurate. What you can charge for pay per call is not determined by what the cost of the technology is. You can charge more for cost per call if merchants believe that a person who they have on the phone (and they can talk to, provide targeted information, potentially cross sell and upsell) is more valuable than someone who clicks in and, without the merchant having an ability to try to sell them, clicks away again.

There are many types of merchants who would pay a lot more (by a magnitude) for a call than a click. The more complex the buying decision, this number goes up.

By: aswath

aswath — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:48:55 +0000

I see the difference. Since the cost of the voice call is free, I feel that there can not be premium for pay-per-call over pay-per-click.

By: Jason Droege

Jason Droege — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:24:16 +0000

Aswath, pay-per-call advertising doesn’t have to do with per minute calling costs or audio advertising, it has to do with providing sales leads for businesses. For example, if I need a plumber I use the yellow pages and the plumber pays to be in the yellow pages. Same idea here except the plumber pays per lead generated from the lead generator (Gizmo Project). Ingenio provides this type of advertising to publishers today.

By: aswath

aswath — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:51:09 +0000

If PSTN termination costs are indeed insignificant, then there is no market for pay-per-call ads. Also why would somebody listen to an ad before the call is completed? By the way isn’t AOL (or is it somebody else) who is giving away for free “In” numbers (virtual numbers)?

By: Charlie Sierra

Charlie Sierra — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:44:06 +0000

Somewhere Roxanne Googin (of Googin’s Law fame) is have the last laugh.

By: Kevin Baggs

Kevin Baggs — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 13:47:10 +0000

What software are you using to do your screen captures and then magnify and project the drop down menus?

thanks,

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 12:49:13 +0000

trouble for Vonage?<<

Pretty devastating I would think. This will have a direct impact on their churn rate, and it's volumes of users that was their business plan. This puts them on the backfoot and management now need a complete rethink.

It'll be interesting to see the effect on stock price when the markets open today. Got to take a bit of a tumble you'd think. They're in desperate trouble.

By: Keith L. Dick

Keith L. Dick — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:22:32 +0000

Free is Free until those that have the Money can find a way to make more money…