For years, software companies have provided ways to make free calls from cell phones, and most of them even work. The problem is getting the software onto your phone.
It’s not that carriers want to make it hard to load Skype, Fring and other free-calling applications onto phones, although the networks obviously bristle at the idea of giving their customers a way to make free calls (also known as voice-over-Internet protocol,
or VoIP, telephony). The bigger issue is that until recently, carriers have made it painfully hard to load anything onto your phone, whether it’s sophisticated software or a simple ring tone.
But since Apple buried its spurs in the backside of the industry by creating an application store that actually works — thereby compelling other companies to follow suit — these free-calling applications are almost within the reach of the average smartphone user.
Of the many free-calling applications that fit this niche, Fring, a start-up based in Israel, and Skype, the standard bearer of the free-calling realm, are among the more user-friendly. But even then, the applications are not yet worth the hassle unless you plan to make a fair number of international phone calls, and can put up with less-than-perfect call quality.
The first thing you need is a device that has Wi-Fi, since your call is going to be carried over the Internet, not through your carrier’s pipes. As long as you are in a Wi-Fi hotspot, you can then make free calls directly to other members of the particular service — Fring-to-Fring calls, say, or Skype-to-Skype, or you can call landlines through Skype.
When you use these services to dial someone’s phone number instead of a Skype or Fring ID, the call is routed over phone lines, then to Skype’s servers, which hand it off to a local carrier to connect…