Free International VoIP

The offer of free international VoIP calls has been a major driver behind the growth of Skype and later entrants into the marketplace such as: Gizmo, VoIPcheap, Babble and Jajah. It's a compelling attention getter; however every commercial enterprise needs to make a profit. Typically the offer of completely free VoIP calls only applies to specific types of connections. In the case of Skype VoIP the calls must be Skype to Skype to qualify. It can even be a multi-party conference call, provided everyone is using Skype.

It's easy to understand why so many people have been asking "what is VoIP?"

In the beginning these companies had no choice but to make the service free. They had to achieve a critical mass of users. Not dissimilar to the problem faced by the inventors of the fax machine.

The offer of free VoIP service was the basis for establishing a relationship of trust and making potential paying customers comfortable with a new technology. Once in the habit of using a now familiar technology they become more receptive to incremental upgrades. Skype is now taking its loyal and growing customer base for a journey down path that has been planned with meticulously care. New features and options will inevitably be released and many of them will be revenue generating.

Because the free international VoIP calls save us money and provide an option to speak regularly with friends and family around the world, we tend to be tolerant about voice quality and drop outs. Predictably the service has become better as technology has advanced and faster broadband services have been adopted. At some point in the future the quality of free VoIP will be comparable with the public switched telephone network.

Consumers and small business have been beneficiaries of these developments. They have had the opportunity to not only use VoIP technology at little or no cost, but to also assess its wider application. They have been given the opportunity to put a toe in the water and personally experience VoIP pros and cons.

The cons include exposure to VoIP security issues such as hacking, viruses and information leakage; challenges that are confronted daily in the laptop security space.

The availability of free international VoIP calls got the ball rolling. Before too long all voice calls will be free, we will just pay for them in other ways.