Efonica VoIP service supports dial-up too

Fusion Telecommunications of Dubai has just entered the already crowded VoIP market with a beta version of its SIP-powered Efonica service. Registered users can chat amongst one another for free using standard telephones connected to an analog phone adapter or dial POTS lines on the cheap, with calls to the US from other countries costing under two cents a minute. What sets Efonica apart from some of the other services out there is its claimed ability to work even on dial-up connections -- still a rarity these days -- allowing people in areas with low broadband penetration to get in on all the fun offered by Internet telephony. Although the basic version of the service is free, calls to landlines or cellphones and voicemail functionality require signing up for the Efonica Plus option, which will avaiable at the end of the public beta test in about two months.

[Via Personal Tech Pipeline]

[Luca @ Jun 21st 2006 12:20PM]

Well, where is the news ? With Chocophone, since 2000, it was possible to use VoIP with dialup, through a patented proprietary protocol.

[Chris @ Jun 21st 2006 12:26PM]

A POTS line is 64kbps with 8K as overhead leaving the more common 56K. A VoIP call uses around 6K. I don't see why every VoIP company wouldn't be able to operate over POTS.

[madREAPER @ Jun 21st 2006 12:48PM]

You guys slipped a bit on this one with this line "What sets Efonica apart from the Skypes and Gizmos of the world is its claimed ability to work even on dial-up connections...".
Gizmo works on both broadband and dail-up, it is even stated on their website here: http://gizmoproject.com/learn-more.html

I've already held a conversation with someone who was using Gizmo over dail-up and the call quality was just fine. I'm not sure where you got the impression that Gizmo does not work with dail-up but at least now you know it does(assuming you read this post).

[dc @ Jun 21st 2006 2:08PM]

This isn't news. I was using Net2Phone over dial-up to call Switzerland from the US over SEVEN years ago.

[Thrillho @ Jun 21st 2006 2:08PM]

anyone else notice how much their logo resembles the DS logo?

[StammesOpfer @ Jun 21st 2006 2:24PM]

Chris that is a clasic case of KB vs. kb dial-up is 56kb where VOIP is 6KB which equals 48kb however due to TCP/IP overhead it is a really tight squeeze then you add the fact that nobody gets 56k real speed and it makes it even harder

[Justin @ Jun 21st 2006 5:55PM]

i think it would be great if you were kicked off the internet by a phone call in the middle of a phone call.

[J @ Jun 22nd 2006 6:22AM]

^ haha
yeah except for maybe international calls isn't this kind of useless, since if you have dial up, you have phone service?

[pnarse @ Jun 26th 2006 3:19PM]

Vonage on the bandwidth saver option works flawlessly over a 56k line.

I routed the broadband phone router though an ethernet 56k modem while my broadband was down for a couple of weeks when I changed provider and it worked perfectly, providing the internet connection was idle.

:D