FreeWorldDialup (or FWD) is one of the popular and widely-used telephony software in the market available. From time to time, FWD has presented new features and functionality to the program. On top of FWD, the Pulver communicator is also used as the software to utilise the free VoIP service, as compared from that of Skype’s.

The functionality is very similar to that used by several Internet telephony companies, such as BT, Skype, and Yahoo!. FWD provides the ability for two or more people connected anywhere on the Internet, to call and talk to each other. Simple ‘phone’ numbers, associated with each account, are allocated and dialed from your Internet phone, the same way you would use to call a PSTN or cellular phone network.

Being free anywhere in the world, it provides a much richer set of feature available with FWD. It supports an array if SIP phones, associated with both software and hardware based.

FWD supports the following various network types: Public IP address, Outbound proxy network, and STUN. Used with various IP phones, some of the certified phones are

• Grandstream BudgeTone
• Sipura SPA-2000
• Cisco ATA-186
• Cisco 7960

Software-based phones are

• pulver.Communicator
• FWD Xlite.
• SJPhone
• eyeP Phone
• KPhone Linux
• KPhone Mac

The FWD setup and adding contacts (like adding numbers on your phone address book) is a simple breeze through. Just like Skype, it has capability of calling PSTN and cellular networks, it also allow PC-to-PC calling via its FWD server network. Anyone using SIP phones will be see the voice quality crystal clear, as though it is through a conventional landlines. FWD is also known to work beneath NAT. I personally tried it out myself via a wireless network, behind a NAT server. I found that FWD might have conflicted with some wireless routing, and occasional crashed the wireless server. It is very likely due to the configuration and incompatibility of my router used at the gateway. Other than this encounter, FWD sounds to be an impressive telephony communication network company, offering excellent customer support services.

Download the latest beta release of pulver.Communicator

To find out more information about FWD, check out their website