Your dream of talking unlimited to your loved ones might finally come true, as Dixons has brought home a new internet telephonic service that will now permit all broadband users to dial calls to UK landline phones, absolutely free!
Launched by Dixons Stores Group (DSG), owner of Dixons, this facility called “Freetalk” aims at registering up to 500,000 broadband houses in a year. Besides cutting consumer costs and telephonic bills, the Freetalk service is definitely going to threaten the dominant player in the residential phone business, BT Group Plc, whose presence has been looking beleaguered lately, with opponent service providers offering stiff competition.
Meanwhile, DSG stated that the “freetalk” telephonic service would enable consumers to make free calls to any landline in the country at any time of the day, up to one year. Broadband users would be required to purchase an adapter worth 79.99 pounds, which would have to be connected with their phones to make unlimited local as well as domestic phone calls, for a period of 12 months. However, charges would be levied for international calls as well as for calls to mobile phones.
After the lapse of the stipulated year, DSG will be charging 6.99 pounds per month for the service, albeit no fee on (landline) local or national calls. DSG’s group managing director for computing and communications, Simon Turner, said, “We intend to break the world of traditional telephony ... (Traditional) fixed-line telephony is very last century.”
The Freetalk service is amongst the new class of firms employing the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology that can offer startling telephonic services at minimal costs to consumers, purely based on high-speed internet connections. Freetalk users can select any area code in the country, and will be conferred a completely ‘transportable’ number. Therefore, users will be able to attach their adapters to any broadband connection for making and receiving free calls, without having to pay any extra roaming charge.
According to DSG, they had a huge target audience of the 6.7 million households in the country that were using broadband connections. Furthermore, DSG intends to introduce an independent proposal especially designed for national businesses next year, and a package for freetalk and AOL Broadband in the coming weeks.
Posted
on : Wed, 28 Sep 2005 13:00 GMT | Business News
By : Chris Rowe
|
