A new service popped up today called IconDial. It’s about as simple and straightforward as possible. Go to the site, which has a phone-style dial pad, and dial any phone number in the world. After a 3-5 second advertisement, your call will be put through. There is no restriction on who you can call – all countries are supported, and you can call both land lines and mobile phones.
For now the service is limited to calls of a “couple of minutes” but the company says they are looking to allow calls of up to 20 minutes soon.
The business model is similar to Free 411, which allows free directory assistance calls with an advertisement based business model. But Free 411 tries to reduce costs with an automated system and smart use of data. It’s not clear that IconDial can lower its costs to any reasonable level, particularly when it allows calls to mobile phones (which have built in costs to the caller in most countries). There’s just no way the company can recover those costs with a short audio ad.
So I guess what I’m saying is, try it now while it’s still around.
what are you supposed to use for country code if you are dialing to USA? 1?
+1
yes use 1 + the area code..
How can I star using this service, Itryed it but it sending me to other wae page..plz help
Gotta hand it to them, this works very well at the moment…God, I hope they stick around. I was looking for a simple online phone calling service recently and nothing really fit the bill on the simplicity front…till now.
Is the service based in USA, do I have to dial as from USA? what is the country code for the States? I am calling from Mexico
There had been couple of other companies in the past who tried something like this, but it did not go much further. Hope these guys get to stick around..
This is great, works perfect in UK, hope this site sticks around.
The GUI needs a revamp though!
What if it charges your internet bill? How comes there is no information on about us or privacy policy, nor terms of use? Is this legal?
A pranksters dream.
I like what tinycrunch said about making the service your emergency phone in case you lose your phone and need to get a hold of people. people like me dont have a landline anymore to rely on.
@ Mike, what do you think about using this as a $2 subscription service for this generation of mobile users who lose their phone and don’t have a landline? Or travelling and run into an internet cafe for a quick call just to keep friends updated. That is worth a small subscription. Could be a great marketing ploy for them.
I think that this could definitely turn into something great, I guess the question is if they have the minds to create a solid business model that works.
I dialled my phone number and I can hear the dial tone. But my cell phone itself never rings.
Yea tried calling myself and it just kept ringing but my phone didnt ring. Im in the US.
Thanks for the kind comparison, but if I may, I’d like to add that we’re profitable on a per-call basis now not only because of the automated system and a smart use of data, but also because our callers have a good experience — the complete range of listings (business, gov’t, residential) and the ability to receive text-message driving directions both make us unique in the field.
Oh please.
Profitable on a per call basis? That’s just spin for our marginal revenue on a per call basis exceeds marginal costs. Now covering SGA costs? That’s another question entirely.
That you brag about covering variable costs is embarrassing considering how much money you’ve raised.
How does your service compete with:
800-CALL-411
800-THE-INFO
800-GOOG-411
Hi “Not George Garrick,”
The fact that you know who George Garrick is is proof that you’re writing from the perspective of one of our competitors, and you’re therefore badly biased. Which competitor, I can’t tell.
I’m not going to get any further into the financials, since the point of my first comment was to emphasize that our success is largely attributable to our callers’ good experiences with our number.
Free411 raised $70 million + and they’re down to a few million left. Down rounds by insiders, if they’ll invest in this dog in a down market (watch it get dumped into the AOL line of business just purchased, at a price less than dollars in Jingle, no employees will make money). It’s on life support, but let the patient die. It got that way by eating way too much Taco Bell with a Diet Coke. The patient is obese, has a bad heart and is brain dead, with only BFF execs left.
Straight up didn’t work.
It’s probably just a scam to collect phone numbers for overseas telemarketers. We all caved in.
I guess its down because of techcrunch traffic. I hope they don’t fail like all the ones before them. I started using jaxtr and although it has some glitches and needs some serious UI overhaul, im pretty happy with it. I pay about 3 cents a minute to call most countries in Latin America, and there is a way to make free calls (for you, not the receiver) if the other person also has a jaxtr account.
Andres, glad to hear you are happy with jaxtr. We have launched a new service today and overhauled the UI as you requested, so be sure to log back in and check it out!
Definitely a good concept, I hope that it keeps expanding. Given that there have been a few failures mentioned above, I think I will wait awhile on it. For most calls, I would need at least 20 minutes or so to complete them anyways!
Jake
NoteScribe: Premier Note Taking Software
Service is down.
Hammered..
Safari can’t open the page “http://www.icondial.com/” because the server unexpectedly dropped the connection, which sometimes occurs when the server is busy. You might be able to open the page later
Oh great more tools for people to prank call.
Not Working! I dialed my nos and it did not go through!
Worked for me, sound quality was as good as a telephone –
If they can stay afloat, this could be big.
A better business plan would be for a subscription for a few $$ per month where you could register, keep a list of contacts, and provide some useful tools found on regular phones such as speed dial, future SMS support, and additional charges for video conferencing and call forwarding. It should also consider a mobile application for cell phones with wi-fi.
I think this service can work well, if it could only handle the publicity that TC is giving it right now
Wow, if they can stay alive, this will do well.
http://gatesand...s.blogspot.com/
never worked for either landline or celphone from South Africa. oops will try again laters. looks like a great idea. but can’t see how it will survive?
finally got through to cellphone. but could not hear anything, still made dialing sound in headset. Also only online for 33sec then call dropped.
The business model is workable, but not with anything Legal….
Simply put he/they could be using least cost routing(via VOIP) … to reduce the costs. So when you call the foreign country routes the call via VOIP to a GSM-IP gateway or Analog/IP gateway and makes an outbound call. To the Operator it looks like a normal call from the line/mobile line.
In most countries though, this is illegal… since they loose out on terminating (Interconnect) costs.
My thoughts are he is most likely buying wholesale minutes from (Questionable?) sources at a pretty cheap rates… (Selling of this.. and the scenario i described is regarded as fraud, and is prosecutable in some countries)
Definitely a scam to sell numbers to telemarketers…
If you look at their forums, it outlines the business plan, as being,
charging 5 to 10cents for a single 3 to 5 second advert, -
assuming it costs these guys 3 cents ( which is very doable ),
for the average call, then the model works -
Either a scam or not working for Aus numbers.
it doesnt work
the business model certainly works. Http://www.Peterpays.com has been around for years now (in germany) with the same idea. And the company is growing!
Not working for India numbers. I can hear the ad though.
Skype, people. Damnit.
@BenB: Your link is not in english! Would like to learn more about your startup!
Worked here, but the problem is I couldn’t hear what was being said in the phone through my speakers (I called myself).
Quality was below-below-average.
Free is free! Time to get some numbers and prank call people world-wide (Just kidding).
did not last long – it’s offline now
pues ya le intente y parese q no funciona, mas no se si es a vace de alguna clave aparte?
Site still down. Error Message:
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.icondial.com/
The following error was encountered:
* Read Error
The system returned:
(104) Connection reset by peer
I’ve spoken to Ashod about icondial and have tested the product.
The icondial page as it stands is a calling card, a demo – and a scalability test it would seem. I’ve got a widget on my contact page for an example – don’t click it, it will call my phone and my local time is +8 GMT here.
Value: allow your customers to call you, whether that be your business web page, paid search or classifieds. with just a few lines of code you can widgetize a link to a phone without exposing the telephone number.
Would you pay an extra 50 cents to have this feature on a classified ad so that with one click anyone can call you without exposing your phone number ?
I looked around for a short bit and could not find anything that does the same – which surprised me, it seems this would have been done already.
I think the business model does work. I did some research around this about 2 years ago – and you can even make it work for mobile-mobile calls (assuming you can gauge demand and buy enough minutes up front with the various operators).
The only difficulties are around gaining advertisers. But essentially – knowing the time of day and location of your caller is pretty good. Plus, don’t forget – doesn’t the calling party also get an ad?
I really wanted to test this out. It’s not workiing for me
won’t succeed. anyone remember dialpad ??
es dificil conseguir el llamador de icon dial nunca se puede conectarce al llamador
es muy bueno saber de esta pagina de ustedes, sera muy interesante conocerlos
040267636
the site is cool
Tried from Ireland, works fine. But the number that comes up on my mobile, when i call my mobile, is another Irish mobile number, it doesn’t show up as “number unavailable” whys that and what is that number? are they routing the calls through this number?
can I have your attention please! I’m from a french country so i’ll speak in french.
j’ai découvert ce site sur une chaine d’infos et j’ai kiffé grave. Malheureusement j’ai tenté à plusieurs reprises mais c’est pas passé.j’aimerais savoir si ce n’est pas seulement les pays francophones qui sont pris en compte.j’attends vos réponses merci.
you can bring me your answer in english if you want.Thank you very much I expect to receive your answer soon as you can!
Not working for me, too.
I’m using http://www.freebuzzer.com lately, only a few short calls permitted but it’s free for international calls.
Hi all. kindly help me i am female from pakistan. i want call worldwide free mobile to mobile kindly anybody give me tip. i will be very thankful. +923452238166 shakira_khanpk@yahoo.com