This morning Illumio popped a couple more free calling companies in my personal feed. It's a sign of the times.
FreePhoneLine.Ca offers free phone numbers and service in Montreal and Toronto, to the first 5,000 subscribers to sign up. Long distance calling to most major cities in Canada is also included at no additional cost, as well as enhanced voice mail and find me follow me. The only time you ever pay these guys is to make an international long distance call. Obviously this is a major loss leader promotion, since the DIDs and terminations in Canada must be costing them something. One wonders what the 5001th subscriber will pay.
Adcalls.com is offering global, free calling. The only catch? You'll get a text message advertisement at the end of the call. Their business model is to sell calling card packages to would be advertisers, and then deliver their advertisements when users use the calling cards.
When minutes are nearly free, margins suffer. That's when the creative business models start to pop up.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
