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August 10, 2008

Free World Dialup moving to $30 annual membership

The email below went out to inform the nearly one million registered users of Free World Dialup of plans to adopt a $30 annual membership fee as of September 1, 2008. Daniel Berninger has responsibility for day to day operations of FWD as CEO, but I wanted to add a few words on the motivation for taking a stand for paid membership.

Yogi Berra said, "When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it." I don't know if anyone predicted that the entire VoIP industry would end up with business models dependent on traditional telecom revenues, but it seems hard to deny with Skype, Jajah, Ribbit, and a long list of others chasing per minute revenues. We are risking the exodus of the FWD user base (and inevitable hate mail) to prove there exists an alternative. FWD will move forward in support of communication between paid members and anyone else with VoIP devices connected directly to the Internet. We will provide no services to facilitate interconnection with the telephone network. This represents a recommitment to the work that motivated the FCC to issue the Pulver Order in 2004 recognizing FWD as entirely unregulated. We believe the energies dedicated toward gaming the telephone network would produce much better results if applied to the task of creating services, applications, and content for communication devices directly connected to the Internet. Chasing an experience based on charging per minute immediately erases the prospect for an Internet like experience independent of geography and usage charges. FWD is the only VoIP enterprise going this route, and plentiful options exist for those looking for cheap minutes. I hope people will remember FWD's 12 years as a free service and wish us luck as we put action to our convictions.

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Dear FWD'er:

Free World Dialup is implementing a $30 USD annual membership fee during the month of August after 12 years as a free service.

A startup taking over a decade to reach conviction about a business model likely sets a record, but we believe $30 USD per year is the magic number. It is 10% of the cost for Vonage's unlimited usage plan. FWD provided the inspiration for the founding of Vonage in 2001, and Vonage's hybrid Internet-PSTN offer now generates nearly $1 billion in annual revenue. FWD's voluntary paid membership experiment last summer demonstrated the demand for a complete break from telephone network. FWD's future as a Communication ISP will include only those services that do not have a per minute charge. Rather than competing directly with the telco's or even Vonage, the mission of a Communication ISP is creating new opportunities and modes of communication. FWD will relaunch the website during August to focus on services, applications, and content available to people with VoIP SIP devices connected directly to the Internet.

See FWD CEO, Daniel Berninger's "Communication ISP Manifesto"

If you wish to retain SIP registration and support FWD, please click through the paid membership banner at the top of the home page which links to the Acteva registration service.

Make sure you use the email associated with your FWD account (the one on which this message arrived.)

If you lost your FWD account info, you can use the password retrieval process or simply create a new account.

The first 1000 paid members get "founder" status, but FWD will retain existing free accounts through August 31, 2008. The new paid membership requirement allows for associating any number of accounts with the email address used for payment, so you can keep the free ride alive by finding a friend with paid membership.

I hope you will join in transforming FWD's nearly one million free accounts into paid memberships as we work to make the Communication ISP the next big thing in VoIP.

Best regards,

Jeff

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Posted by jeff on August 10, 2008 08:13 AM | Permalink

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Comments

"When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it." or, as Kirkegaard put it:

"Laugh at the stupidities of the world, and you will regret it; weep over them, and you will also regret it. Laugh at the stupidities of the world or weep over them, you will regret it either way. Whether you laugh at the stupidities of the world or you weep over them, you will regret it either way. ..."

Any business needs a source of money, but things being in turmoil as they are right now, I am not sure charging $ 30 annually will work out. As many others have pointed out there are quite a few free voice communication services around, and I do not believe the notion of them being stuck in old PSTN business models. You get free national telephone service with some providers in germany *without* a telephone line you would have to pay for, just DSL! The old german Telekom would love to switch off archaic analog and ISDN lines as their infrastructure is mostly MPLS based anyways. You gave us FWD for free for 12 years, and I thank you for that, it is highly improbable that their will be regular PSTN lines around in germany in 12 more. Voice communication will get cheaper all the time, resulting in a world flatrate in less than that. Mobile phone services might take a bit longer.

Again, thank you for giving us FWD, and I still think it is mostly F as in freedom, wish you luck.

Posted by: Eibo at August 15, 2008 06:15 AM

Sorry if I sound a little snarky, but isn't it little disingenuous to call it Free World Dialup anymore? That said, there is nothing wrong with offering a useful communications service for a reasonable price.

But keep in mind that I already have to pay for a PSTN connection to call the vet, the bank, the doctor, the insurance company, and so on. And I'll have to keep doing so until and unless all these businesses provide some way to reach them via an open VoIP protocol.

I think you should advocate embracing and extending the PSTN (like various projects such as dundi, fwdOUT, and ipkall.com are effectively doing) rather than shunning it.

Furthermore, I am already paying for an internet connection so that I can do things like VoIP over it. There are any number of free VoIP/SIP networks I can sign up for if I want to.

Maybe it's too bad, but these open protocols and networks are not necessarily going to make some entrepreneur with a killer app wildly rich overnight. People and businesses are just going to gradually start rolling them out as they become more standardized and robust, and save money here and there.

And it will take many, many years -- decades, in fact -- to replace basic infrastructure like the telephone network. Look how long it is taking IPv6 to catch on. And all this VoIP and SIP networking would be infinitely easier if we all had IPv6 and didn't have to mess around with NAT. None of this port forwarding, STUN or UDP keepalive nonsense, or people writing master's theses about "full cone NATs", or having to configure external IPs in softphones, etc.

Maybe if you offered IPv6 connectivity to the FWD VoIP network, it might be interested in the $30/year membership.

Posted by: Justin at August 15, 2008 01:00 AM

Jeff, I really pity you. You have worked so hard the last 12 years to bring FWD up and it's ok, that you would like to earn money with FWD. FWD is a great service and why not asking the user to pay for it?

But it looks like, you have chosen the wrong 'friends' for that. In my opinion Daniel Berninger is a great pretender and there is a high risk, that he will destroy your lifework.

Asking for money is ok, but the way that guy is doing that is arrogant and stupid. And if somebody don't believe me, check all his homepages and you will see, 'Daniel is the Greatest'.

Good by FWD ....

Posted by: Guenther at August 14, 2008 10:01 PM

If you consider $US30 too much, then don't bother thinking about a 'business' activation at a whopping $US300 !!!!

Sorry, I want to support you, but not at this pricing; it is ludicrous to say the least.

Posted by: affinity at August 14, 2008 09:23 PM

So much for what this image says on the home page:
http://www.freeworlddialup.com/img/fwd_sentence2.jpg

I can't see how $US30 can be justified considering what is currently in place. Using a single email address for multiple services is a joke. If you must charge anything, it should not be more than $US10 per year per service and each and every service should be paid for. Perhaps if multiple services per email address on private (non-ISP) domains, then $US5 per extra service beyond the first... this would rule out yahoo, hotmail and gmail addresses for starters as well as any standard ISP mail domain; so perhaps it would be too much of a nightmare.

FWD currently, as far as I am aware, offers nothing that isn't otherwise available at no cost from alternative providers such as Voxalot. Paying Voxalot $US15 per year (for VoxLite) adds additional features that are very useful, but that is half the pending FWD cost and many thought that the Voxalot charge was excessive... but FWD charges might put a rest to that (hopefully this won't influence Voxalot to increase costs to users).

Other providers have low costs together with off-net calling.

Posted by: Affinity at August 14, 2008 09:10 PM

Jeff, other places have moved to subscription models but there are many free alternatives that are just as reliable. Unfortunately many of us expected this would happen but we thought you'd actually give us some value for our money.

Do I have $30 for you? Yes, but we have to see what we get for it. When Truphone and Voxalot switched from beta to paid services I paid them both. Truphone offers SMS and tight integration with my Nokia phone. Voxalot allowed reliable aggregation of my SIP identities but their limitations forced me to move to MySipSwitch.

So let me ask you again... What am I getting for my money? Is there an iPhone or Nokia integration app? Is a free incoming number provided?

As much as I want to support you, I have to decide where every dollar goes. If using non-SIP was financially feasible, then I'd be paying so I didn't have to deal with the clumsiness of using an internet connection to call people and places. At the end of the day, Skype may not be standards compliant but when I pay I get something for it.

Posted by: Tommy at August 14, 2008 08:19 PM

$30 ... you're joking.
You have been left in the dust by Skype and SIP companies worldwide.

For free I used it once a year. For $30 you can have it all back.

Posted by: JustJoe at August 14, 2008 07:49 PM

Missed it by "that much."

The new entry in the market INCLUDES SIP, PSTN and provides a usb dongle for RJ11 connection to a standard telephone handset.

All for $20.00/year.

I won't give the name (unless you ask) because I HATE it when folks use a firm's blog to pump a competitor.

$10.00 per year, you would have had me. $30.00 per year won't work for me.

Thanks for the ride, best wishes

Posted by: scwis at August 14, 2008 07:19 PM

I like FWD and would like to remain with you, but I don't use it enough to be worth the $30. If FWD included unlimited PSTN connection in the $30, I would definitely consider staying. I can get free SIP calls with any number of other providers.

Posted by: Ron at August 14, 2008 05:34 PM

So it's no longer going to be called FREE World Dialup (FWD)???

More advanced notice would have been more considerate before abruptly discontinuing service for non-paid members.

RIP FWD! You will be missed...

Posted by: xovu at August 14, 2008 04:21 PM

Since I use FWD for testing and learning SIP only. I newer use FWD in production. Now I have my own Asterisk server do I don't need FWD anymore. You need better way to collect money than 30 $ annual membership. Thanks for offering this service.

Loc

Posted by: Loc Nguyen at August 14, 2008 03:55 PM

Ouch. That means it's time for me to move off of FWD. Sorry guys, but I really can't afford it, given that college tuition & fees are skyrocketing.

Looks like I'll be without any kind of telephony service while I'm at school. :(

Thanks for the fun, while it lasted. It looks like I'll be needing to change providers.

Posted by: Anonymous Coward at August 14, 2008 03:35 PM

With so many services offering zero cost call connection between members and no sign up fees, it just doesn't make sense to stay. Couple that with the ability for most other services to provide very cheap calls to the PSTN, I don't see what sort of value for money the $30 could possibly be. If there is a secret weapon about to be announced that would make the $30 value for money, then why not announce it now? If there is no secret weapon, then it just doesn't make sense.

Posted by: Bonj at August 12, 2008 10:47 PM

Brad,

Two answers regarding the value members get for the $30 annual fee.

1) Present - Reliable SIP registration: A lot of people have gone to the trouble of connecting their family via VoIP SIP devices. FWD has proven a reliable source of SIP registration for these devices (which includes dealing with NATs) and the $30 annual fee does justify a search for alternatives given the track record. People do not rush out to find the cheapest solution for things they care about.

2) Future - VoIP SIP enabled applications, services, content: A decade into the VoIP "revolution" the technology remains a mere access mechanism for the telephone network. The paid membership business model allows us to explore applications, services, and content that leverage a true Internet experience with connectivity independent of usage and geography based charges.

The hope is that we can set up conditions for a VoIP ecosystem that parallel those that drove the world wide web. The web offered very little in 1991, but it grew rapidly as content attracted audience and audience attracted content. Tying VoIP to the telephone network erases this possibility.

Best regards,

Dan

CEO, FWD

Posted by: Daniel Berninger at August 11, 2008 10:47 AM

Jeff, this announcement is a bit confusing. You imply no PSTN connection is involved, so what exactly are people getting for their $30 per year? Surely not just SIP switching? Is it NAT relaying perhaps? Some other PSTN service?

I would hope the web page could be clearer about just what FWD will be providing for this fee, and why people would want to pay it.

Posted by: Brad Templeton at August 11, 2008 04:37 AM

Jeff -

I think it is something you have to do at FWD. It is understandable and (should be) and interim step while you look for a long term value proposition for FWD customers.

Best of luck,
Brian

More at:
http://briantroy.com/blog/2008/08/10/free-world-dialup-moving-to-30-annual-membership/

Posted by: Brian Roy at August 10, 2008 01:01 PM

I will stay with FWD!

Posted by: Diordna at August 10, 2008 10:19 AM

Jeff, I agree with your idea that moving towards a paid model is a long term solution. But for the time being, given the alternatives available, it does not make sense.

Alok

Find more on
http://truvoip.blogspot.com/2008/08/would-people-pay-for-inbound-sip_06.html

Posted by: Alok at August 10, 2008 10:11 AM