Broadband Version of Free World Dialup Internet Telephone Service Launched by Jeff Pulver, CEO, pulver.com.

Business & Technology Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 12, 2002

Jeff Pulver made the launch of the broadband version of Free World Dialup official at a New York Grand Hyatt launch event.

Free World Dialup does for telephone customers what Napster did for music listeners. Anyone with broadband access to the Internet can use an IP phone to talk with any other IP phone user by registering with Free World Dialup (FWD). FWD provides the centralized directory that allows IP phone users to find each other. "Free World Dialup will make voice the killer app for broadband. Once someone buys an IP phone they can make as many calls for as long as they want. We don't pay every time we listen to a CD, so why should telephone usage prove any different?" said Jeff Pulver, CEO, pulver.com.

Jeff Pulver quietly launched the broadband version of Free World Dialup (http://www.pulver.com/fwd) on November 11th by incorporating recent advances in VoIP as he has several times since the original launch of Free World Dialup in 1995. This time he pulled the plug on connectivity with the traditional telephone network and removed the analog portion of the call associated with several miles of copper wire connecting a user's premise to the incumbent telephone company's central office. Members can now only call other members, but they enjoy sound quality that far exceeds Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). "Once someone makes FWD call they don't use POTS again, unless they have to call someone who remains a non-member. This represents almost everyone at the moment, but it doesn't seem so long ago when no one had an email address," said Jeff Pulver. FWD membership has continued to grow rapidly giving Free World Dialup one of the largest user bases among Internet telephony service providers after only a month in service.

Free World Dialup brings the email model to telecom. The cost of email has nothing to do with time or distance. Same for FWD. FWD requires only Internet access and an IP phone. "The notions of local, long distance, and international means no more to members of the Free World Dialup community than they do to people browsing the web," noted Daniel Berninger, Managing Director, pulver.com. "A conversation between someone in New York City and someone in Athens, Greece costs the same as an email and sounds better than a call next door."

"Unlike Napster, telephone users OWN their voice, so while telephone companies like Verizon might not like it they can't stop people from using Free World Dialup," said Daniel Berninger. "It seems worth while to point out that consumers in the United States spend 20 times as much on telephone service as they do on buying music CD's." FWD turns telecom into a simple extension of consumer electronics business. The present implementation uses the widely available and cheap ATA-186 (or cool and expensive 7960) IP phones from Cisco, but there exists few obstacles to add additional IP phones from other vendors.

Free World Dialup - telephone calls for the price of email.

About pulver.com (http://www.pulver.com)

Jeff Pulver founded pulver.com at the end of 1994. In addition to producing the highly successful VON conferences, pulver.com is engaged in many activities that promote the growth of communication technology. The pulver.com website (http://www.pulver.com) is a key source of information for those in the IP Communications industry and The Pulver Report (http://pulver.com/reports) has over 65,000 subscribers for whom it is a primary source of news and information on the latest developments in emerging net technologies. Mr. Pulver is the founder of: The VON Coalition, pulverRadio, RevUp Records and co-founder of: Vonage and WHP Wireless.