Free FuturePhone International Calls Not So Free
February 08, 2007Free FuturePhone International Calls Not So Free
At least not for AT&T, who apparently had to foot a bill for US$2M per month, according to GigaOm.I’m behind on my VoIP reading again, but apparently AT&T’s lawsuitagainst them has caused FuturePhone to slap a huge red sign on theirwebsite: “This service is no longer available.”
FuturePhoneplayed a sort of telephony arbitrage, setting up a phone number intelco-friendly Iowa, who
offers certain subsidies. For whatever it costyou to call the Iowa number, you could terminate your call to aninternational number for free. I suggest you read the GigaOm articlefor a clearer explanation, but essential this arbitrage amounts to whofoots the call termination costs, and instead of being billed$2,000/mth, AT&T got billed $2M/mth due to FuturePhone’s “unlawfulpractices”.
A few other states have similar subsidies for telcos. Gizmo Project’s parent, SIPphone, has a VoIP service named area775 based in Nevada.