If you are a whistle phone user, you must have received an email from them which talks about capping free phone calls to USA and no free follow-me service anymore. If you are not aware of whistle phone you should read this post about Whistle phone's free calls to USA offer. We talked at length how they provide free calls and bear the cost by playing a small ad at the beginning of the call. This idea as we mentioned earlier is similar to Ringplus which offered free international calls and supported it through ads. None worked though, and it's sad.
Whistle Phone still offers free calls
In their last email they put a cap on the amount of minutes you can use per call but the call is still free. You are only allowed to talk free for 20 minutes per call. We would assume it is enough for anyone to have 20 minutes of free calls but we always hate restrictions and thus do not approve much of it. If you need a simple ad-based solution to make free phone calls to USA read this post.
No more free follow-me service
Whistle phone also offers follow-me service which basically forwards your calls to your home phone or cell phone or work number. With the recent changes they will no longer support follow-me service for free users. If you want to use this service you must pay 1.7 cent per minute. However, you can choose Google Voice and get this for free for at least till the end of year 2011.
Why is this sad for Voip industry
Whistle phone is the second example which shows that ad-based solutions are not self sustaining when it comes to Voip industry. We have seen how Ringplus changed their policies to force customers to have a minimum balance in their accounts in order to make free calls for certain time. Similarly, Whistle phone had to change their policies to cover their losses. We hope one day some voip provider will come up with a brilliant idea to offer totally free unlimited calls to most of the destinations.
Thanks for this article , you are right " it's sad news"
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