Free World Dialup is announcing free worldwide VoIP (Voice over IP) phone service. Any FWD member with broadband Internet can call any other member for free, anywhere in the world. This works with some “software phones” and VoIP gateways like the Cisco ATA-186.

In practice, FWD is working as a registrar to index and map VoIP users; they have nothing to do with the infrastructure. This is, of course, the way new communication services should be implemented.

There are a few catches. The calls work only between FWD members; there’s no official bridging to the “plain old telephone system”… (but see below). You must buy an approved SIP User Agent – either hardware or software. Depending on your provider and connection, audio quality may not be all that great, or there may be audible interruptions.

Recently the ITU defined +87810 as the country code for VoIP calls. Another standard, ENUM is being used to map between VoIP phone numbers and IP addresses. This means that, once established phone companies decide to bridge their old systems – meaning, soon-to-be obsolete systems – over to VoIP, this will be the country prefix to use; all Internet users are in the same cybercountry, of course. So far, only some Austrian residents can dial +87810 to call a FWD from their old phone. It remains to be seen what “long distance” charges will be applied in such a case; to keep charges low, every city should have a local bridge.

Thanks to boing boing for the link.