Hitherto, telecom services were provided either by Government bodies or large multinational companies in view of the huge investment in infrastructure. With the advent of the Internet and the newly emerging VoIP technology, it is now possible for any small company to provide online services offering free phone calls to anyone, anywhere in the world. The services include PC to phone calls, PC to PC calls, PC to cell phone, online conferencing and Internet fax facility. These types of service providers can be rampantly found on the Internet.

Using the Internet to place your long distance calls has become the order of the day. To those who may not be familiar, voice over IP is a new form of telecommunication that allows users to place long distance telephone calls through their computer, often at negligible cost as well as free. Moreover, 3-way calling and chatting with a number of people simultaneously is possible.

With the Internet, long distance calling methods have become both easy and cheap. Voice over Internet Protocol or more popularly known by its acronym VoIP helps to make unlimited long distance calling cost-effective for many business enterprises - particularly export houses and companies that have a large number of overseas clients.

With VoIP technology, your voice is changed to a digital format that is then transmitted over the Internet wirelessly. Thus there is no more need of long wires to link one phone to another. Now, satellites help to transfer the signals that can then be received at any corner of the world. A decade ago, none would have imagined that Internet phone calls would become so easy and cost-efficient! Now there are millions of users all over the world making free long distance calls using popular, free VoIP services and software.

This is much more effective than standard telephone lines, because it costs much less than transferring voice units through telephone lines and the voice quality is also rich and clear. This is the reason why VoIP is much sought-after today by many individuals, self-employed professionals and companies - both big and small.

Before choosing an Internet phone system, you should do some pre-study to determine the right plan suitable for your use. Check also with various VoIP providers for pricing, so that you get the best long distance rates available. Most VoIP service providers offering free phone calls will obviously impose some restriction on the amount of free time customers can avail.

Other restrictions may also apply in the way free phone calls are used - such as restricting calls only to other users in the same network or restricting free calls to certain countries. However, the consolation is, even if the free service ceases to be free, the amount charged for all types of calls are extremely low rates - particularly when compared to the earlier conventional telephony.

People who are already familiar with the use of computers and willing to download and setup the software, unlimited free phone calls is a distinct possibility. All you need is the computer, Internet connection, software and a gateway from a service provider. Please remember that the called party should have the same compatible setup on their computer