>With the world getting smaller, international travel for personal or overseas posting for business reasons have made free international calls a growing necessity, and free phone calls online is the only answer. Families are spreading out all over the globe, businesses are establishing factories and branches in different continents and tourism is increasing at an unprecedented rate. The Private Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) system has its limitations, and increasing costs have made it even more incapable of coping with the need for affordable trans-global communications. The advent and fast rise of internet technologies, communication protocols and transmission resources resulting in the Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, have provided the means with which to make free international phone calls using free phone calls online.

Voice over Internet Protocol, sometimes referred to as IP Telephony, Broadband Telephony or Broadband Phone, refers to communication services such as voice, fax or SMS over the internet bypassing the PSTN. IP Telephony is actually the overall system for voice communication, while VoIP is the part of it that deals with phone calls. The most common IP tools are IP Phones, Software VoIP and Mobile and Integrated VoIP. Software VoIP in turn consists of Web Calling, Voice and Video Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing. VoIP is now used on many smartphones and internet devices.

In 2004, mass-market VoIP services were introduced utilizing the internet to make and receive phone calls just like the traditional PSTN system. Phone companies were established providing full-service telephone services for a flat monthly fee. Under other arrangements, subscribers to the same service could call each other for free. VoIP uses what is referred to as a “softphone”, an application that in effect turns the computer, equipped with a microphone and speaker, into a phone. Thus, a computer with this application can make calls to and receive calls from another computer. Through certain arrangements, calls can be made from the computer to regular telephones.

Because it is internet based, computers that can make free phone calls online can also make free international calls under the same system. Many VoIP service providers offer free international calls among subscribers of their service. Others charge fees that are still lower than those of PSTN systems.  In many cases, providers of free phone calls online rely on advertising subscriptions to their site, or fees for more sophisticated services, to provide them with revenues.

Free phone calls online have to contend with the limitations of the VoIP system. Among these are problems with reliability in the transmission of the data especially when satellite transmission is used, susceptibility to power failure, internet outage and the inability to access emergency numbers.

These limitations in ordinary, everyday usage are more than offset by the cost savings when making free phone calls online.