Re: free phone calls into our telecon.

Len:
In the January 29, 2001 issue of Interactive week there's an article called
"No Ringy-Dingy" located at:
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2679799,00.html )

"The days of the free phone ride appear to be numbered. Companies have been
dropping - or at least rethinking - the provision of free calls over the
Internet from personal computers to standard telephones."

"The two biggest Internet telephony carriers, Dialpad.com and Net2Phone, are
holding onto the free model - for now, anyway. But Net2Phone mentioned in
its last quarterly earnings call that it was considering moving from the
free model."

Kathleen Anderson, Webmaster
Office of the State Comptroller
55 Elm Street
Hartford, Connecticut   06106
voice: 860.702.3355 fax: 860.702.3634
e-mail: kathleen.anderson@po.state.ct.us
URL: http://www.osc.state.ct.us/
URL ACCESS: http://www.cmac.state.ct.us/access/



----- Original Message -----
From: Leonard R. Kasday <kasday@acm.org>
To: <w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 2:35 PM
Subject: free phone calls into our telecon.


> I've been trying a service that gives free internet phone calls into the
> U.S., www.dialpad.com.
>
> Setting it up was very smooth for me.  There was nothing to download (it
> works off a java applet which doesn't really count as a download).
>
> The sound quality takes some getting used to.  Voices break up and at
first
> it sounds like you're losing some of the words or parts of words.  But
> after a while you realize that at least for the most part it's inserting
> very short breaks (maybe a 100 msec or so) in between and inside words, so
> you have kind of piece them together.  After about 5 or 10 minutes it's
> like learning to understand someone with an accent you're not used to.  I
> had usuable, though not great, conversations.
>
> Unfortunately, the Java applet doesn't seem to be accessible.  For
example,
> there doesn't seem to be a way to get into the number entry field without
a
> mouse.
>
> Still, If you'd like to join one of our telecons, you may want to give it
try.
>
> There's another couple of companies I haven't tried, www.phonefree.com
> and
> www.go2call.com
>
> searching on "free phone" in the open directory (accessible e.g. from
> Goggle) lists a bunch more.
>
> Len
> --
> Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
> Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at
Temple
> University
> (215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
> http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday         mailto:kasday@acm.org
>
> Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/
>
> The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant:
> http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/

Received on Wednesday, 31 January 2001 12:44:56 UTC