AllFreeCalls, a new service which lets people make free phone calls by first calling a phone number in Iowa and then calling to any of dozens of other countries, just added eight new countries to the permitted lists (plus Antarctica). In an email the founder also said that they handled 80,000 call minutes yesterday.
The company operates under a legislative loophole that gives rural telco’s a kickback on every received call. That kickback is greater than the cost the company bears for making outbound international calls. So someone’s paying for these calls (other telecos? taxpayers?), just not the person using the service. I love bureaucracy.
i know i read about this somewhere before….that’s right….Vecosys (www.vecosys.com) that site in the UK run by Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher
while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, don’t you think it would serve the community far better if you were more timely in the information you publish and circulate
its not like we don’t live in a global where newsfeeds can be pulled down from anywhere in the world
and as they say on NBC….that’s one to grow on
Mike, alexa numbers (I know, alexa is crap..blah,blah) do not show a very impressive user base. I see a big jump from your first mention…but very little since.
Do you have anything (besides an email from the founder) to show what you mean by success?
Just wondering.
Some benefits of bureaucracy!
Cheers!
Alpesh
mmmm just added another country, antarctica?
mmmm wrong antarctica is a continent. which is silly of them but you should be smarter not to repeat it.
Antarctica has no “permanent population” and hence no citizenship or government. All personnel present on Antarctica at any time are citizens or nationals of some sovereignty outside of Antartica, as there is no Antarctic sovereignty *wiki
that’s a good point. but they do have a country calling code.
When does India get added?
Government kick backs are bullshit, no matter which way you look at them. This is my tax dollars at work, so some cheap ass can make cheap calls. That makes sense. I also love the one that gives McDonald’s $1,000 (or is it 1,800?) for every employee they hire, no matter how long they stay employed. That one makes a lot of sense too, considering McDonald’s is so poor and all. Oh wait, I’m totally being sarcastic.
just matter of time, before the governments amend rules to bring them to book.
“The company operates under a legislative loophole that gives rural telco’s a kickback on every received call. That kickback is greater than the cost the company bears for making outbound international calls.”
That cannot be true. can someone here verify this with some numbers?
i stand corrected then. +672 is a country code for a continent
i have emailed the Australian Base down there to ask where 672 came from
john
Hi Micheal,
Do check out my hack to make Allfreecalls.net work for non-USA people. Now even if you are not in USA, you can use allfreecalls.net. CEO Pat Phelan has endorsed this on his blog.
http://voipguid...-worldwide.html
I’m finding that both the the AllFreeCalls number, along with a similar Iowa number run by a different comapany, have some kind of compatability issues with skype.
When entering the number for my redirected call, using touch-tones over skype, the system doesn’t seem to recognize all the numbers and ultimately complains that the (mal-formed) number isn’t valid.
I’ve heard of some other issues using JaJah and skype… Anyone able to confirm similar problems, and secondly anyone know if Skype is putting a spanner in the works on purpose?
Ben
Donald – i don’t see this info on vecosys. did they write about it? I got an email from the company with the news. Perhaps they wrote about it when it first launched?
DTMF Codes seem to be a problem on that bridge.
Try the 1-712-945-4444 number. Skype works on that one.
Dave G
why would you need daily hits. User needs to get the access number one time, one visit equals a new customer, we got 14708 new visitors in the last 7 days to the site which was after the Alexa spike.
So a potential new 15,000 customers in the last seven days, bet Microsoft would like that.
Alexa numbers are totally meaningless for companies whose business is phone based. Our users visit our site once or twice a month, they access our service via the phone every day.
I second Erik, Alexa # doesn’t really apply to this company. As a matter of fact, they don’t even make money from their site. Eyeballs doesn’t matter much to them either.
The service is great for now, since it is at it’s early stage, so hopefully they will be able to scale as it grows more popular and not deteriorate.
Hi Michael,
I’ve been trying to dial phone numbers in countries that are listed but I keep getting busy signals.
Any idea if this actually works?
- J
How safe is this, what if they record every calls one phones into. One has to be cautious on this one. Nobody gives free for nothing.
awful service – it sounds like you are calling from the north pole to south africa. Lots of busy signals as well.
Hi Jon/Jorge
please contact me by email to discuss issues you are experiencing as that is not the feedback we are receiving in general.I tried your blogs but your contact details are not available.
my contact details are on my blog.
Chris
We record nothing and keep absolutely no records. In fact our server is purged of all numbers @ 12am EST every night.
Pat Phalen,
Im just saying – it looks like no one has gone to your site to get the phone numbers (except for one day). Thats all.
I have used futurephone (www.futurephone), a similar service (iowa based phone#) with great success and they seem to have more free countries.
http://www.voipcheap.com provides similar service and its online for the past one and half years. I think voipcheap is a direct competitor to skype cos it compares its pricing with skype. The best thing is it shows how much skype charges for the same call. I prefer voipcheap to skype cos its cheaper and simpler to use than skype.
Above all with voipcheap one can call to many countries for free, eg., US landlines and mobiles – absolutely free for certain period (more than one year in my case) and you will never get a negative reply. God knows who pays for all this…
Ben, you should find skype recognizes numbers if you are on latest version, I had issues with older versions.
Pam
Tried AllFreeCalls multiple times on different days to several numbers I usually call in the U.K. Not one call has been successful. The failures come in several different flavors, including a U.S. operator “number is not in service” message (definitely not true), fast busy signals, and dead air.
This dog won’t hunt.
These numbers are working:
712-338-8868
712-338-7005
Has anyone noticed that one of their competitors “FuturePhone.com” was mysteriously shut down?? Are they cracking down on this business now?
Rob
شخة على شخة تبقى الدنيا فيها زخة
hey !! thats not working please fix that no. 712-858-8094 …….not working aha not working!!! ….plese let me know!! i cant place any call it says no is changed and after dailing that changed no . its says wrong no
we should be back in 5 hours