P2P Meets PSTN, With Bellster

flinderhans writes "Jeff Pulver, the guy who started Free World Dialup (free VoIP network) and had the germ of the idea that turned into Vonage, has launched a P2P network called Bellster that allows users to share their private lines to make calls anywhere on the public-switched telephone network. Interesting stuff, even if it doesn't look quite ready for prime-time."

Comments

I remember something like this for bbses

[krudler]

using a phone line on a bbs to call *another* bbs that was out of your long distance range. Cool oldschool stuff :)

Re:Costs

[ibpooks]

Also, the US is the only place i've lived where local calls were free.

They usually aren't exactly free. Typically if you read the fine print, there's some deal where the monthly service will include 400 or 500 local calls "free", and then you pay through the nose for additional local calls. I would bet these clauses are there to specifically prevent a re-seller situation like this. An open public line could probably hit the 500 call mark rather quickly.

what if you pay for minute on local calls?

[spectro]

The idea is great for the US where you have flat rate local calls, however I see it will very diffictult to find somebody volunteering their phone lines in South America or any country where greedy phone companies like Spain's Telefonica run the show. In there you pay per minute for you local calls and I can see somebody's phone bill growing exponentially.

Re:"Free" with a big cost

[mwilliamson]

You can run asterisk on a linksys wrt54g, linked with a sipura voip adapter and that is all you should need. $200 and you're there.