layout: post title: Free World Dialup created: 1060056660 categories:

• VoIP

Dan Gillmor raves about the goodness that is VoIP:

In the past month, I've done my part to undermine a monopoly. How? By making phone calls.

Whatever. I want VoIP at home. Can't get it. Or, at least, can't get it at a reasonable price in Canada. But, I do now have a Free World Dialup account. My number is 48340. Feels like the early days of ICQ -- sign up now to get a low number that shows you're cool!

Of course, now I'm going to have to track down software that will let me work with it on my Mac...no MSN Messenger for me, thanks.

There is Mac2Phone, but it seems tied to a particular service (and is a crappily-written Java program). Hmmm...a Google search leads me to believe that iChat is in fact a SIP client, except it can't really talk to other SIP clients. Double hmmm.

Here are some more likely candidates -- Xmeeting (H.323 only), GnomeMeeting (need to run it under X11, can be installed via Fink). Put links in comments if you find others...

Here's the welcome message:

Welcome to the Free World!

Thanks for signing up for Free World Dialup (FWD). We hope you enjoy taking advantage of what FWD has to offer and that you can help us to continue to spread the word-of-mouth awareness that FWD exists.

Today, with Free World Dialup, as a user you get for free:

• FWD number
• CallerID
• Call Waiting
• Call Forwarding
• Call Transfer
• Multiple Presence - meaning you can have the same FWD Number appear on multiple SIP phones.
• access to our free conference bridge
• Free Voice Mail is scheduled to become available by September, 2003.

We launched FWD in November, 2002 with a small group of friends. And as of August 04, the FWD service has over 42597 users from over 170 countries.