Calls to the U.S. & Canada for .01/min., and even cheaper international rates, with Gold package and chance for free credits to offset that!!
Your PC is your Phone Download Lycos Phone and start using your PC to call landlines and mobile phones. Get 100 free minutes to US, then earn free talk time through partner offers. All you need to start is a headset or microphone and speakers.
Free Gold Membership Validate your name & email address and upgrade to a Gold Membership for free. Gold members receive their own US phone number, and a 10% discount off our already low international rates.
PC to PC Free Calling - no biggie, can get that already, but...
Unlimited Free Incoming Calls Get unlimited free incoming calls from any PSTN or mobile phone around the world. Receive innumerable international calls directly to your laptop or desktop.
Receive Voice Mails even when you are offline Enable the Voice Mail option to receive voice mails when you are busy. You can also receive voice mails to your e-mail even when you are offline.
Receive calls even when you are Offline Don't miss your calls even when you are offline. With our 'Follow Me Service' facility, get your calls redirected to your mobile or landline.
If you've wanted to dump your landline and go with just your cell, this may be the answer! Great value.
I cannot attest to the voice quality, but I have Vonage and it's hinkey, mostly good, but sometimes problematic. The 'Follow Me Service' is great for using a mobile with the service (I'm not sure if Lycos Phone charges for the follow minutes when you're using another phone, so beware). E-mail voicemail rocks, too.
NOTE: there are other VoIP options, such as StanaPhone.com, that have these same features and more, but they cost more per minute. Please see the Quick Tags below for more rates on Lycos Phone. Again, this may not be for everybody, but it is a GOOD DEAL and that's why it's posted here. Thanks!
This service is probably not much better than a lot of other services such as Stanaphone. They assign a local number out of RI. The service is ad based and it does not work very well with IE 7.0. It may be possible to set the service up with your own terminal adapter assuming you can get the credentials; however I haven't had time to test it yet. With companies like Sunrocket offering a real VOIP service with a local number and unlimited domestic calling for ~$8 per month it makes little sense to waste too much time on these ad based services with out of town numbers
xavier
Senior Member
posted: Apr. 4, 2006 @ 10:07p
can you choose what area code you want your phone number to be in? is there a list of area codes available?
To get free minutes, You gotta complete "free" offers (like CC applications, Ubis bidding account, DVD rental, things that you may not need etc..) . I gave my info to start & in the middle I got really pissed as they dont show my account info unless I complete an offer. Gave up..
Not worth IMO.
reedie
Senior Member
posted: Apr. 4, 2006 @ 10:16p
i might have to try it.
techy2
Member
posted: Apr. 4, 2006 @ 10:19p
Lycos seems like a bigger company, and it does have end to end encryption which is hard to come by. These things make me trust Lycos more than the Stanaphone you're referring to.
Craig said: This service is probably not much better than a lot of other services such as Stanaphone. They assign a local number out of RI. The service is ad based and it does not work very well with IE 7.0. It may be possible to set the service up with your own terminal adapter assuming you can get the credentials; however I haven't had time to test it yet. With companies like Sunrocket offering a real VOIP service with a local number and unlimited domestic calling for ~$8 per month it makes little sense to waste too much time on these ad based services with out of town numbers
xavier said: you might want to check Gizmo they give you a free nevada phone number and their software interface is excellent Except with their "free" phone number, I cannot seem to answer an incomming call - it gets forwarded to the Vocie mail - you can supposedly press "1" to pick up the call - never can seem to get it to work...
dumroo said: xavier said: you might want to check Gizmo they give you a free nevada phone number and their software interface is excellent Except with their "free" phone number, I cannot seem to answer an incomming call - it gets forwarded to the Vocie mail - you can supposedly press "1" to pick up the call - never can seem to get it to work...
To get the "755" phone number working, make sure 1) turn off Edit|Voicemail Setting|Activate voicemail in the Gizmo program. 2) turn off "Voicemail is Active" in your Gizmo account online.
Wish they had an automatic way to wait 30sec for voicemail. I guess this will be available in the future upgrades.
avatarx
Member
posted: Apr. 4, 2006 @ 11:07p
I tried this and I'm satisfied with it. I haven't tried YAHOO VOIP or Skype but I think they are more expensive. I used Dialpad.com when they were really free.
I signed up with bogus info and got $1.00 call time. I went to the free minutes site and sent a bogus car quote to carbytel.com? and got $2.00 free call time. $3 = 300 minutes.
Nice post and a great find, Avatarx. Very thorough and well written article. Lots of "I need to check it out"s but this service does seem to have some serious advantages, along with its excellent rates:
1) all incoming calls FREE
2) voicemail to e-mail
3) Writer does fail to mention 'Follow Me Service' which I don't believe the others have (could be wrong on that) and it's a GREAT feature. Also, in my original post I pondered whether these minutes would be charged and warned caveat emptor...duh...all incoming calls are FREE...a Homer Simpson moment, sorry...
I've been using it for about a month and am down to the last 12 cents of my free $1.
I tried doing several offers, mostly for online universities, but they all went to error pages in the middle. avatarx, thanks for your advice! I did the car insurance offer and it worked!
Here's my review: I got a Massachussets phone #, area code 978. The sound quality is quite good, although Skype's seems a little better.
The software is good, except that you can't copy and paste phone numbers, so you have to manually type them in or click each digit on the number pad - ANNOYING!
The voicemail feature is quirky; it doesn't work consistently. And you have to remember to turn it on. I leave it off while I'm at the computer so that I can answer incoming calls, and then (if I remember!) turn it on before I leave. I wish there was no such switch, and instead, it would simply ring a few times and then go to voicemail if I don't pick up. Stanaphone has this feature (that service has been very buggy lately and I've stopped using it, btw).
More about the voicemail feature: no outgoing message can be recorded. The default message is by a woman with a strong Indian accent who speaks too softly to be heard easily. I tried calling the # to hear it and it's pretty bad.
The TV channels work well, including CNBC from India.
Conclusion: Thumbs-up overall. It's a good deal, if for nothing else than the free minutes. The per-minute rates are very cheap and it works for the most part. I still use skype for important calls and toll-free calls, which I believe are NOT free with Globe7. Also, I DON'T plan to ever make a payment to this company since it's based in India and so doesn't seem like a safe transaction to make.
Note: this review is for Globe7, not Lycos VOIP, although they appear to be identical.
has any one used the call forwarding feature? Is call forwarding free? They dont have any mention on the website about call fwding. Skype charges regular skype-out rates for this feature. that is 2c per min of call forwarded.
I believe lycos also charges normal out going rates for the call fwd feature. Can some one verify? It would be really sweeeeeeeeeeeet to have a p2p service with free call fwd and free incoming.
Another questions. Do you know if lycos work on smartphones(windows mobile 5.0)??
I agree with the post for the most part EXCEPT, the ~$8 per month is nolonger available. So, I'd say about $16 a month and not $8.
Craig said: This service is probably not much better than a lot of other services such as Stanaphone. They assign a local number out of RI. The service is ad based and it does not work very well with IE 7.0. It may be possible to set the service up with your own terminal adapter assuming you can get the credentials; however I haven't had time to test it yet. With companies like Sunrocket offering a real VOIP service with a local number and unlimited domestic calling for ~$8 per month it makes little sense to waste too much time on these ad based services with out of town numbers
From what I've read, this doesn't support any adapters or SIP phones because Lycos is dependent on you reading the ads they've sold to subsidize the rates which are at or below their cost.
Have you guys looked into chatterbug - seems simple enough, keep 911 service intact, $9.95 unlimited to us/canada, need basic phone service, but no broadband.
Folks...I think we're getting too picky here. This post has gone from very green to nothing because people are getting into minutae and not seeing a bigger picture (people who've NOT tried the service, I might add).
There may be a plethora of potential users out there who:
-don't want to sign a committment or pay a monthly fee -just want the free incoming calls and don't care where the number is located -are content to piddle around with signing up (ficticious names and created-only-for-this-offer e-mail addresses seem to work fine) in order to get free minutes
According to the posts I'm reading, most of the people who've tried it are generally happy with it from a functional standpoint, in spite of its limitations (and ALL systems have limitations).
So, to many, this would be a good deal. That is the intent of this site. Maybe it doesn't exactly fit your needs, but does that make it something the rank and file shouldn't read?
There are many who would benefit from this and so I posted it--not necessarily to say it's better than paying for SunRocket, getting Gizmo, or whatever--but rather to expose a nice offer to the masses here.
PLEASE: Don't mark things RED if it's not a bad deal (especially if you haven't even tried it and are speculating), and this certainly doesn't qualify as a bad deal.
EDIT: I was later corrected on the following point, as stanaphone.com has these features and more, but is more expensive to use, also:
At the moment, no other VoIP providers have a free U.S. phone number and free incoming minutes, plus their international rates are extremely low.
Yay. Its now green again. I don't intend to try this service. But the Original Post is a very well written post. So, it gets a green from me. Besides folks who red posts for the sake of redding them piss me off. So, this is green as there are too many folks who rated it Red without even looking or trying the service out.
tomprc said: healthylaugh said: At the moment, no other VoIP providers have a free U.S. phone number and free incoming minutes
this is plain wrong.
Can you please post details on how I can go about getting a free US numbers with free incoming minutes? Wouldn't hurt to get a free phone line for incoming calls you know.
As to the RED you just gave, have you tried this service? Have you had issues with it? Is the OP lying in his first post? Or did you just give RED coz you did NOT like the title of the thread?
free US number, free voice mail to email, free unlimited incoming minutes, (not free) forwarding
Plus (lycos does not have yet):
free fax to email.
Lycos forwards for free? i don't believe so.
Yes, it's true that StanaPhone has that, and I've used it for over a year beautifully, but for the past few weeks, since they upgraded, I've stopped using it because of various problems.
dkong said: Yes, it's true that StanaPhone has that, and I've used it for over a year beautifully, but for the past few weeks, since they upgraded, I've stopped using it because of various problems.
Has it worked for you?
Yes, it works for me very well. Actually I use it to call overseas EVERY DAY for free, with both sides using a REGULAR phone.
And just now I tested the incoming call from a regular number. It also works fine.
Now, tell me what is your base to rate my post above red. Did I say anything WRONG?
sm123
Senior Member
posted: Apr. 5, 2006 @ 12:58p
Tomprc wrote:
Yes, it works for me very well. Actually I use it to call overseas EVERY DAY for free, with both sides using a REGULAR phone.
And just now I tested the incoming call from a regular number. It also works fine.
Now, tell me what is your base to rate my post above red. Did I say anything WRONG?
==========
Can you please let us know how you can call overseas for free using REGULAR phone on both sides? Thanks.
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