FYI to the board: More DLGC Gateways on the way..
Maverick pioneers free 'Net telephony
By Stewart Taggart
Sydney, Australia-People all over the world are reaching out and touching someone with free long-distance phone calls over the Internet.
Using a global group of Internet telephony gateways maintained by volunteers, Net maverick Jeff Pulver has created a network of 25 cities that routes voice calls at no cost to callers. The volunteers running the gateways have each contributed roughly $1,700 for the hardware and software needed to become part of Pulver's Free World Dialup project.
Mr. Pulver, on a visit to Sydney for an Internet conference, said he expects the network to grow to 50 locations by the end of this year.
Earlier this month, Mr. Pulver announced new telephone gateways in Sydney and Melbourne. They join existing international gateways in areas that include Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Moscow, Athens and Toronto. U.S. gateways include cities in New York, New Jersey, Texas and Florida.
Under the system, volunteers install hardware and software specified by Mr. Pulver so specifications are kept uniform. Registered callers to the gateway enter a personal identification number and the telephone number they want to call, which must be within the local calling range of another gateway in the system.
The caller's gateway then contacts the receiving gateway over the Net, and the receiving gateway completes the call within its local calling area.
As part of the deal, volunteers pay for the ongoing maintenance of their gateway and agree not to charge users for the service. By not charging money, the network falls outside government telephony regulations, which never took into account the possibility someone might one day offer free service, Mr. Pulver said.
Mr. Pulver set up the network partly to help expatriate friends phone home at a lower cost. By registering for the service, callers must agree they are not using the system for business.
And as long as the system remains free to users, it should be able to survive, Mr. Pulver said.
"By not charging the end points, we're functioning and providing a service but remain a nonentity" in commercial terms, Mr. Pulver said. "How can they go after us?"
The network got its start in 1995 and has undergone a major quality upgrade earlier this year to become among the largest on the Internet. "The reason people are doing it is that it provides a chance to prove the technology works," he said.
Many of Mr. Pulver's volunteers are entrepreneurs eager to learn the tricks of Internet telephony with the aim of opening profit-making Internet telephony businesses. But others are Internet idealists who-like Mr. Pulver-say they are eager to give something back to the Internet.
Stewart Taggart is a writer for CMP Media Inc.'s TechWire. E-mail your reactions to this article to telepath@cmp.com.
Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc.Maverick pioneers free 'Net telephony |
