The company, based in San Jose, Calif., offers free long-distance telephone service over the Internet to anywhere in the United States. Click the number and dialpad would pop up and you can call free to anyone in the United States. Hewitt said the site gets 50,000 new users a day.
Users see banner ads while they're on the call.
Internet telephony has been done before, but totally free calls in which the person being called need not have a computer is a twist. The caller needs an Internet account and computer with a sound card. He also needs a combination microphone and earphone headset that will plug into the sound card's microphone and speaker jacks. Many computers come with them. The caller's computer must be a Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT PC running Internet Explorer 4.0 or greater or Netscape Navigator 4.5 or later.