There is a catch, however. You must choose from three advertising-supported tiers of service. The first plan lets you to make unlimited phone calls within the U.S. for the price of a banner ad displayed in your browser window. The second plan lets you make an unlimited number of free, 10-minute phone calls to any of 23 countries. HotTelephone will disconnect you after 10 minutes, but you can call repeatedly.
Advertisers sponsor only ten minutes per call.
The free countries include Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Spain, Ireland, France, and South Korea. The third option lets you call anywhere through a somewhat-convoluted sponsor program. To make free long-distance calls from your PC outside of the 24 supported countries, you must earn free calling minutes. You can buy the minutes from HotTelephone. HotTelephone also has a telecommunications partner.