An eruption of Web services offering free long-distance calls makes phoning home much less expensive.
With Northwestern’s long-distance rate of nine cents a minute in the continental United States, free long-distance calls from PC-to-phone or phone-to-phone are becoming popular alternatives for NU students.
To place a PC-to-phone call, the computer must have speakers and a microphone. A headset also can be hooked up to the PC and provides better sound quality.
Some Web-based services such as Phonefree (www.phonefree.com) and MyfreeLD (www.MyfreeLD.com) require downloading programs. Phonefree offers voicemail, file and picture transfer, and PC-to-PC calling worldwide in addition to free PC-to-phone service in the United States. MyfreeLD provides the largest calling range with no limits on number or length of calls.
Other PC-to-PC or PC-to-phone services are available without downloading extra programs. Mediaring (freecalls.mediaring.com) offers free calls within the United States and to Canada and China.
Dialpad (www.dialpad.com) is one of the most widely used PC-to-phone providers, but many NU students bypass it for this reason: often with PC-to-phone calling, connection lines are busy and sound quality is poor. Weinberg freshman Yuanxia Ding used Dialpad twice but stopped because of the static. Other students expressed similar displeasure with Phonefree.
“It was crappy,” said Katie Althen, a Weinberg freshman. “There was too much interference.”
Other Web sites such as Send-A-Call (www.sendacall.com) and Broadpoint (www.Broadpoint.com) allow users to talk on the phone instead of through PC microphones, eliminating most sound problems. These companies require registration and offer only short calls for free.
With Broadpoint, users have the option of listening to ads to earn calling-card minutes. Callers can earn up to two hours of talk time per month by listening to short 15-second ads before placing calls. Each ad earns two minutes of phone time.
Some sites offer phone-to-phone calling without registration hassles. Xtreme Voice (voicebutton.extremevoice.com/freeld/FreeLD.asp) offers free five-minute long-distance calls and I-Link TalkFree (199.172.8.28/weblink/Default2.asp) offers up to 20 minutes of talk time one of the longest calling options. After the first four minutes, the user must click a computer-screen icon for each additional two minutes. There are no fees or ads, and aside from a 15-minute waiting period between calls, I-Link offers unlimited use.
Althen researched free Internet phone service before she left for college.
“I knew I would be calling lots of friends,” she said.
Links for free communication services are available at www.1888USA.com.