Today, SIPphone, Inc., the company that develops GizmoProject, the Skype competitor Internet calling and instant messaging software, launches a new calling plan that will allow active Gizmo Project users to place FREE calls to landlines and mobile phones in 60 countries around the world. The new service is already active now.

If this is not good news, you tell me what it is.

Voice over the Internet ("VoIP") is renowned for the ability that has been offering to hundreds of thousands of people around the world, to talk freely with peers, colleagues and family who had a compatible VoIP technology on their PC or Mac.

But today's announcement tops and zeros out the counter on what are the new reference standards for VoIP based communications. By making it possible to make completely free telephone calls to any of your existing Gizmo contacts, Gizmo Projects further pushes the limits of free direct communication on the Internet, becoming the first VoIP provider to go beyond the already tantalizing new offers from direct competitors Skype, JaJah and Babble.

Here more details:

Gizmo Project software (reviewed on sister site Kolabora.com recently) lets users make Internet-based crystal-clear free audio calls using the Internet. As easy to use as an Instant Messenger, Gizmo Project also offers such features as free voicemail, free conference calling, complete call history, and built-in instant messaging (IM) capabilities.

As you probably know, Skype, Babble, Jajah, Ineen, Jabbin, GTalk, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Microsoft set of messengers and many others are all real-time communication tools which fully integrate one form or another of VoIP, letting their users call each other via the Internet and talk freely without limitations as if they were on their traditional phones.

Starting with Skype, only a few of these tools have recently introduced the ability to receive and dial out calls to standard landlines and mobile phones at extremely competitive rates with what offered by traditional telcos. Skype offers SkypeIN and SkypeOUT services, which through a prep-payment allow anyone to get a real phone number on their computers, which you can give out as a traditional line (I have one in San Francisco that rings me here in Rome on my PC), or make it possible for you to dial out to basically any phone number out there, while paying very low connection rates.

But the revolutionary phase has started no longer than three weeks ago when Skype contender JaJah announced the first of its kind free call plan offering. JaJah also introduced simultaneously the ability to dial all those calls from your computer (no matter what OS) and to do away altogether with having to install or configure any software to do this.

JaJah was rapidly followed by Babble which on Jun 30 launched FreeB, 30 minutes of free calls to landlines (and some mobiles) in over 25 countries - and then on July 12th introduced two-way SMS texting, another first for Internet telephony.

Babble is another fully featured Skype contender which has recently enriched its tool with the ability to serve free television channels viewing, radio listening, games and more. Whoever is or was still babbling that instant messengers of the new generation will NOT be integrating larger set of new features, should start to review their predictions as all announcements from the above three, as well as those from Yahoo, AIM and Microsoft have also reflected this convergence toward IM as diving platforms to enhanced communication and collaboration experiences.

Skype itself went into frenzy and decided to promote itself a limited-time offering of free phone calls for people in the US and Canada.

But back to today' scoop.

The big news from today is that next to JaJah and Babble users also everyone using the non-proprietary Gizmo Project can now make FREE calls to landlines and mobile phones of other active Gizmo Project users who are in their Contact list, reaching beyond simple PC-to-PC VoIP calls and fully into the new realm of free IP telephony.

The free offer from Gizmo Project allows you to reach contacts on their traditional phone lines in far away countries such as China, Brazil, Japan, Germany, Thailand, France, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Canada, US and UK and more. Here is a detailed list of the countries served:

Free Calls to both Landlines and Mobiles

Hong Kong
Canada
Singapore
United States
US Virgin Islands
China
Guam
Puerto Rico
Vatican City
San Marino
Thailand
Saipan
Russia
Malaysia
Malawi
South Korea
Cyprus

Free Calls to Landlines

United Kingdom
Spain
Ireland
Germany
France
Netherlands
Italy
Denmark
Sweden
Switzerland
Belgium
Greece
Portugal
Luxembourg
Taiwan
Chile
Hungary
New Zealand
Estonia
Argentina
Poland
Monaco
Venezuela
Gibraltar
Japan
Iceland
Finland
Slovenia
Croatia
French Antilles/Mart
Bulgaria
Panama
Guadeloupe
Peru
Brazil
Zambia
Liechtenstein
Turkey
Australia
Norway
Czech Republic
Israel
Austria

Calls to other countries not on the list, or calls to users who do not have an active status, will be billed at the standard low rates found at www.gizmoproject.com/rates.

Gizmo goes way beyond its competitors offerings in a number of ways:

a) JaJah serves less than 20 countries with their free plan.

b) Skype offers free phone calls to U.S./Canada and rotates select major countries like Mexico and the UK periodically for a couple of days at a time.

c) Gizmo Project low-rate calls (that is those calls outside the free call offering) are unmatched by its competitors. See below for a detailed comparison with Skype and Babble.

Call to Germany
o Babble (.018)
o Skype (.024)
o Gizmo Project (.016)

Call to Japan
o Babble (.036)
o Skype (.026)
o Gizmo Project (.035)

Call to Brazil
o Babble (.055)
o Skype (.062)
o Gizmo Project (.054)

Call to Greece
o Babble (.018)
o Skype (.024)
o Gizmo Project (.025)

Call to South Africa – Cape Town
o Babble (.073)
o Skype (.078)
o Gizmo Project (.077)

Call to Mexico
o Babble (.091)
o Skype (.114)
o Gizmo Project (.115)

Call to Sweden
o Babble (.018)
o Skype (.024)
o Gizmo Project (.019)

To compare with JaJah rates it is a little more difficult as the rates vary depending on where you are calling from. Check JaJah exact rates and how they compare to these by using the JaJah call rate calculation assistant.

People who wish to take advantage of Gizmo Project unbelievable offering need only to download Gizmo Project, sign up for a free account and add their friends, family and business contacts to their Gizmo Project Contact list.

Callers can then call their Contacts for free on Gizmo Project, mobile phones or landlines.

Please note that to be eligible for this new All Calls Free offering you need to log in your account and make a call using Gizmo Project to attain “active” status. Thereafter, calls to other active Gizmo Project users in select countries will be free. Active users are considered in fact those people who regularly use Gizmo Project to make calls to other Gizmo Project users (on a PC) or to any landline or mobile phone.

But don't forget that the free Gizmo Project software is also available for Macs, Windows, Linux and even for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. All these free software tools can be downloaded at http://www.gizmoproject.com/download.

For more info see also:
The Gizmo free-call surprise, too good to be true?
and other related posts at:
BeyondVC, O'Reilly Emerging Telephony, Soaring on Ridgelift and VoIP Watch