Thomas Anglero, CEO of FreeWorldDialup, explains how the service lets members make free calls by routing them through local nodes over broadband. The company launches publicly in June and expects to reach 250 cities, with revenue from charging service providers rather than users.
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You've probably seen those commercials where phone companies use celebrities to offer you lower rates on local and long-distance phone calls. Well, our maverick of the morning says his company can give you the lowest rate on calls to almost anywhere in the world, and he's not using a famous person to do it. How much exactly?
Nothing.
Thomas Anglero is the CEO of FreeWorldDialUp and is here to explain how his system works. Thanks so much for joining us. Good morning. Alright, free is good, but how in the world can you have free phone service?
Free is very good, and how FreeWorldDial-Up does it is every member of the FreeWorldDial-Up community purchases a FreeWorldDial-Up node, a little gateway about the palm of my hand, and they connect their gateway to their broadband internet connection, broadband being DSL modem or cable modem, and that FreeWorldDial-Up node is also connected to your local phone line, and it has a telephone coming out to get the node as well. They, the call, they place a call just like normal dialing,— that doesn't change. And the call goes out into the internet. The FreeWorld Dial-Up Service looks for another member of the community who is in that calling location. The call goes into that node, makes a local phone call in that location, and completes the call. So every member of the community, of the FreeWorld Dial-Up Community, shares their local access, and therefore the call is free. And the service is free.
So this sounds like Napster and how you can find some local computer with music on that you want. And you do the same with the phone?
Yes, this is very much what the A lot of people calling Napster for telephony.
Yes, sir.
Well, there have been some concerns with what happened to Napster, but this is very different.
This is different, yes, absolutely. We're legal, so—
That's number one.
Right. And also, you know, we're providing a service that the phone quality is excellent. There is no question about phone quality over the internet. It's absolutely pristine. Two days ago, I was on the phone using Freeworld Dial-Up with one of our private beta testers in Australia for 30 minutes, and it was absolutely perfect.
It must be terrible news for the long-distance phone companies, isn't it?
Uh, maybe terrible news, maybe good news. You know, a wake-up call. Another one.
Yeah, well, they've had that part of their business squeezed so much. I mean, that's been the story going on for a while with these long-distance companies, is that eventually it will be free. It's just that you beat them to it, I guess.
Yes. We have a very experienced executive management team. We understand the technology. We understand telecom. And so we put it together and we're offering this free service for everybody.
How do you get it?
You go to freeworlddialup.com. And sign up. We start in June, making it publicly available for everyone. And we welcome you to the Free World Dollar community.
And how are you going to make money out of this business?
Well, forever Free World Dollar will always be free to all our Free World Dollar community members. That will never change. One of the revenue models that we see is that we have a lot of service providers and a lot of these telecom companies who are upset with us coming to us saying, "We want access to your Free World Dollar community. Your people are unique." So we have a revenue model that we will charge for access to our members. And offering them different services in the future.
And available in what cities?
It is available in whatever city a Freeworld Dial-Up member signs up for. So as the community grows, so does the available number of cities grows as well. By June, we'll have it in over 250 cities around the world.
Wow. And I guess if you look at the sort of speed that Napster grew by, if you have that kind of growth, I mean, hardly anyone's going to be paying for a phone call.
If we have that type of growth, then I think telecom people and all telecom companies will be very upset, yes.
Wow.
Thomas Anglero, thanks for joining us.
Ronnie, good luck.
Thank you.
Sounds mighty interesting, that's for sure. Markets meantime continue to soar. Coming up on Market Call, a big jump in the weekly jobless claims report. We'll have the details, plus the latest world and national stories making headlines outside the business world. Later, we head to the Daily Roundtable where nothing is left unsaid.
