Free PC to Phone Calls: The Computer is Now The Free Call Making Phone

The enthusiastic endeavour of making free calls is now possible for human beings to make with the introduction of many new technologies in the field of communication. So, the calls that are taking place in frequent periods of seconds are almost free.

The technology that is perhaps making headlines in the mediums being used by human beings is VoIP in the present era and the improvements that are being provided with this technology are wonderful enough to entice users all over the world to shift their tools of making phone calls using the VoIP technology.

If one has to consider the meaning of the process which is involved in VoIP, then the primary thing that takes place is human voice being converted into digital signals and then these signals are sent across the network after being compressed into data packets using techniques like speech compression.

The mediums which are there for making VoIP calls are many and the most frequently used tool is the PC or the personal computer. Hence users are now able to make free PC to phone calls http://www.youtring.com/Phone.aspx to their friends living in any nook or cranny of this big wide world. The result is therefore, the increase in usage of this technology due to its wonderful features and since the primary feature is the calls being free, hence users are able to make free PC calls in a smooth and an excellent manner.

Free phone calls are therefore, being made by many human beings with the help of the communication software that they install in their computers. This software is present on the websites of the VoIP service providers and the users who avail the services of these service providers are able to download the software on their PCs and then install it for the purpose of making free calls enabled with the features of VoIP. The service is frequently used with an improvement in economy of nations with more human beings having access to computers.

The VoIP service providers who normally give the technology to its users for making free PC calls have a reason for doing so. The cost of the calls that are being made are handled by the magnificent revenue that the websites receives from lots of companies who put their product advertisements on the service provider websites. From the companies side, there is a valid reason for doing so, as the VoIP service provider websites see the maximum number of hits at any time and hence, the advertisements are normally read multiple times and hence some of the users turn into the customers of these companies by acquiring the products after being impressed by the advertisements that they see on the websites.

Hence, the business of providing VoIP services, is becoming quite a profitable one with many VoIP service providers being established and therefore, the number of customers who are using the wonderful technology in making free PC phone calls http://www.youtring.com/Phone.aspx, is growing at a rate which is quite phenomenal.

Most of the softwares that are provided have many wonderful assets in the form of user friendly features like interfaces being designed in the form of standard phones. The result is that the user has no difficulty in making free calls by being able to associate the working of the softwares with traditional phone systems.

The borders of countries are no longer important for communication and the various formalities that are normally being made are also nullified in the sense that the working of the overall technology takes place in a manner which enables free calls to be made from any city in any country to any city present in another wonderful country. The nationalities of VoIP users are therefore, many with the result being this technology assuming a global presence and hence a dominant presence in the world.

The place from where free calls are being made is therefore, a giver of many new opportunities both to the person making the call and also to the service provider who is giving this service. Another wonderful receiver of this wonderful service is the company who is able to effectively market his products in the form of widely viewed advertisements being put on the websites of the VoIP service providers.

Who Killed the VoIP Revolution?

"VoIP is dead," Skype General Manager for Voice and Video Jonathan Christensen declared at an industry conference a few weeks ago. He spoke figuratively, of course, but he may well have been right. While proponents of Voice over Internet Protocol had long promised a decade of creative destruction, they themselves appear to have become the victims.

The full potential of a technology is not always realized once it converges with market forces. In this case, the gravitational pull of the incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) has always proved difficult to resist. Most of the VoIP industry, while loudly proclaiming the "session-initiation protocol" SIP era as the beginning of the end for monopoly communications, secretly courted the incumbents in hopes of profiting from replacing their long-amortized investments in the fixed-line business. By tying their fortunes to the whimsy of the ILECs, many of the upstarts suffered, destroying billions of dollars in shareholder value in the process.

Recently, PulverMedia, which spurred the VoIP crowd and rode its financial crest, shut its doors amid a swirl of controversy. As of this writing, Sonus Networks (SONS), once a highflier trading at 95 a share in 2000, goes for about 2.29. Even Cisco (CSCO) has thrown in the towel, discontinuing its BTS series of softswitches, which provide the routing logic for VoIP networks. These dismal stories perfectly mirror the ride of the VoIP industry in general.

Assault on Monopolies

The outlook was once a lot better. In 1999, with the ratification of the SIP specification by the IETF, advocates who wanted to tear apart the monopolies that dominated telecom started to beat the war drums. Following conventional wisdom that the Internet democratizes and deleverages any market into which it enters, they found it easy to persuade investors to pour billions into VoIP products and companies. Regulators seemed to support that theory, too, sealing the deal with the Federal Communication Commission's so-called "Pulver Order," which defended the VoIP industry from over-reaching regulation and tariffing.

The anticipated period of "creative destruction" came, all right. It began in 2001 with the smiting of the competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) and long-distance competitors, who had not yet even had time to embrace VoIP, by predatory pricing from the incumbents. It continued with the shift from fixed voice lines to wireless phones, as evidenced by the drop in landlines. More recently, the guns have been turned toward the VoIP equipment vendors that begat the revolution in the first place.

Voting via VoIP—Coming soon to a polling place near you

We'll be pulling the lever on Tuesday—or touching the screen, or making our mark, but we won't be phoning it in.

At least not yet.

The thinkers at San Diego-based Everyone Counts are betting they can get voters to register their preference by VoIP within the next few years. Their Web-based technology won't just make life easier, they say. It will change the course of elections.

When Australian military personnel voted in a recent federal election, 22 percent sent their votes in by mail. When they voted by phone using Everyone Counts, participation rose to 75 percent, according to Lori J. Steele, CEO of Everyone Counts.

Consider that there are some 6 million U.S. voters overseas, less than 5 percent of whom have their votes counted in a typical election. A commensurate rise in participation could mean a difference of almost a million votes.

To utilize the technology, a voter dials in and uses touch or voice to enter authenticating information, typically some combination of ballot code, PIN, date of birth, Social Security number or driver's license number. Then the ballot is cast by touch or voice.

Which form of ID will vary with local law. "It depends on the county and city and the state. We just have to tailor it to the laws of the jurisdiction," Steele said.

VoIP allows the ballot to be encrypted using established Internet encryption protocols.

Everyone Counts is not alone in experimenting with telephonic voting. IVS of Louisville, Ky. for example proffers a paper ballot marking system in which voters make their choices using a touch-tone telephone located at the polling site.

Everyone Counts, however, claims to be the only Internet-based effort. Its product has been road tested in the United Kingdom, where the British Labour Party has been using it in party elections since 2000. The tool has featured in certain local U.K. elections since 2007. Labor unions, credit unions, homeowner associations in Australia, Canada and elsewhere also are using it.

Pricing is meant to help users phase into the product. For an upfront project fee, Everyone Counts will build and run the first election. In year two the buyer takes over with the vendor's help, and beginning in year three the buyer flies solo with an annual license. Steele says the cost works out to be about half the cost of paper ballots.

The company may have an uphill climb, since its target market is government entities, which never are an easy sell. But Everyone Counts has an inside edge in the person of COO Paul DeGregorio, former chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a national body charged with overseeing a broad range of electoral processes.

"He knows everyone from the federal level in most countries to the local election level in America, so we have a clear understanding of who is aggressively trying to serve the voters and whose laws allow for the implementation of things that are electronic, that are not being currently used," Steele said.

Steele anticipates the adoption of this new voting technology will nonetheless take time.

"We believe that the first place where it will be strongly implemented is for overseas voters. Of those who live or serve abroad in the military—who tried to vote in 2006—70 percent were not counted, and that is typical because it is much too slow to get ballots back and forth overseas to be counted," she said.

After that, municipalities will look at implementing the technology at polling places, to assist those with disabilities who may have trouble accessing conventional voting mechanisms.

Only then will attention turn the convenience factor, those who just don't feel like getting out of the La-Z-Boy on Tuesday evening.

It will take time.

"You can't go to a government and say, 'change everything now,' because they panic," Steele said. "But if you show them how it works in situations where they need it badly, then that familiarity drives solutions in other settings."

Still, the public has shown itself wary of any digital incursions into the Old Ways of voting. It's a point that irks Steele slightly. "People are perfectly happy to hand their ballot over to an 80-year-old woman who puts it in a cardboard box and puts it in the trunk of her car," she fumed. "That can be hacked just by going to Kinkos!"

Still, she says, VoIP's time will come. A generational shift is coming, people are more accustomed to existing in the ether. "Paper will phase itself out ever time," she said.

Comcast VoIP Revenue Up 44 Percent in Third Quarter

Comcast phone revenue increased 44 percent in the third quarter of 2008, though the pace of net additions has slowed.

Comcast executives say they are confident they will be able to add over two million new phone customers this year, though.

"Just to put a point on it, I think what we are talking about is marginally less net adds, so instead of 550,000 phone ads, it’s 450," says Comcast COO Stephen Burke.

"In terms of small and medium-sized business, I am getting very optimistic about this business," Burke adds. "The revenues grew 42 percent year over year."

Comcast added about one additional percentage point of phone service penetration in the third quarter, which now stands at 13.3 percent of homes passed. Comcast also has some markets with penetration in excess of 20 percent.

VoIP services should be in service in about 8.5 million more U.S. households over the next two years, growing about 14 percent annually, according toPike & Fischer.

The number of VoIP-connected households in the United States will approach 30 million by the end of the decade, generating more than $11 billion in revenue for cable operators, telephone companies and network-independent providers Pike & Fischer predicts.

iSkoot for Skype Puts VoIP On Androids

The beauty of having an open platform is that you can largely operate without boundaries and without the restrictions imposed by some overlord.

If you want to save your precious minutes each month, it might be a good idea to load up your newly acquired T-Mobile G1 with iSkoot for Skype. This is the first mobile VoIP application for Android smartphones.

In effect, you can make Skype-to-Skype calls right from your new smartphone. Unfortunately, you do use some data and some airtime if you use iSkoot, but at least you can save on the major long distance charges that you may otherwise incur. Local calls might not be so good.

For more information, check out the official page. And yes, iSkoot is free to download.