RIVER BENDER - June 2000
Over a year ago I wrote an article for the River Bender called "Watch out Telcos - here comes Internet telephony!" If you'd like to know what's happened since then read on. You may be in for a pleasant surprise.
It's here folks! You can now make long-distance phone calls from your PC to almost any telephone in the U.S. The surprise is that you can do it absolutely free by subscribing to Dialpad.com at http://www.dialpad.com. This Silicon Valley company went online last October and now claims to have over six million customers. I've been using it and it works.
What is Dialpad? Why is it free? Is it legal to make free toll calls? Dialpad is a web site. Instead of having to download software to your PC all you need to do is register at their web site to use it. You'll be asked questions about your personal preferences so that advertisements can be displayed that might attract your interest. It's the ads that pay the way for Dialpad and enable you to make free toll calls. Insofar as legality is concerned, I was unable to find any litigation underway against Dialpad nor any inquiries or dockets filed by the FCC. I did find that Clemson University temporarily blocked students from using Dialpad from the school's PCs but lifted the ban after strong protests by the students.
Does Dialpad sound too good to be true? Yep, there is a downside: A phone call over the Internet is a virtual connection unlike a switched circuit connection on the public switched telephone network (PSTN). In other words you won't have a dedicated full-time circuit nailed up. Instead, your voice is broken into packets of bits and routed over the Internet. The packets don't necessarily take the same route to the destination. This sometimes causes a slight delay in reassembling the packets in proper order at the destination resulting in a gap in the conversation. Also, if you call during peak busy hours on the Internet your call may deteriorate in quality or become impossible to make. Therefore, Internet calls are not toll-grade quality and at best are like cell-phone calls. But they're free; most work pretty well and eventually technology will make them better.
What do you need to use Dialpad? You need Windows 95 or 98, MS Explorer 4.0 or better or Netscape Navigator 4.5 or better, a modem that's 28.8 kbps or faster, a soundcard and Internet access. Most of the PCs made within the past couple years are suitable. One item, however, sometimes presents a problem. You'll need a microphone and a set of earphones that disable your speakers. The reason for the headset is to prevent the party you call from hearing an annoying echo of his voice coming out of your speaker and back into your microphone.
How does Dialpad work? After you've registered at Dialpad go to their web page and sign in with your password. When the web site is ready you will see a signal indicator showing 4 vertical bars indicating that you are connected to a voice gateway server and ready to dial a number. On the touch-pad displayed on the screen, click the phone number and listen for a distant ring like any phone call. Hello...and your phone call will begin. You'll learn quickly to speak one person at a time because if both parties speak simultaneous you'll get a silence gap. By observing this rule many people you call will never guess that your call is over the Internet.
I use Dialpad to call companies that don't have a toll-free number. I also use it to call distant relatives I haven't spoken to in years and want to exchange genealogy information with them. Another fun thing is to search the Web for the telephone numbers of long lost friends or schoolmates and call them using Dialpad.
What's the future of Internet telephony? It looks good. More work is needed to standardize a protocol that treats voice calls different from data calls to reduce packet delay differential. Some folks say that voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) will ultimately replace the existing public switched network. Many companies are scrambling to get in on the act including the phone companies and eventually you'll be able to use your telephone to originate Internet calls instead of having to use your PC.