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Ad-Supported Free Telephone Calls

Free phone calls including free long-distance calls are now available from freephone2phone. The company supports its own costs (and makes some money, one supposes) from the inclusion of advertisements at the beginning of your call.

Here's the deal:

  • Listen to one or two short (10-12 seconds) ads. This is how we pay for your free calls.
  • Dial any telephone number (landline) in a wide variety of nations.
  • The call recipient receives a normal call from you (no ad on their side).
  • Make 10-minute calls to any phone number anytime.
  • Listen for short beeps 30 seconds before your call is disconnected.
  • Freephone2phone has a strict privacy policy, does not listen to your calls and will not divulge your personal information to third parties.
Science fiction fans have been listening for this service ever since J.G. Ballard wrote about free telephone calls in his 1963 short story The Subliminal Man:

Franklin waited impatiently as the five-second commercial break cut in (all telephone calls were free, the length of the commercial extending with range-for long-distance calls the ratio of commercial to conversation was as high as 10: 1, the participants desperately trying to get a word in edgeways to the interminable interruptions), but just before it ended he abruptly put the telephone down, then removed the receiver from the cradle.
(Read more about Ballard's free telephone calls)

From FreePhone2Phone.com.

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