Update:  Futurephone's service is offline at present.  It seems other phone companies have blocked access to FuturePhone's access number.  You can check out their web site to see when/if the service resumes.

Futurephone has been getting a bit of publicity, boasting that people in the USA can make free phone calls to many overseas countries.

It sounds like there might be a catch and there are some catches, but not as many or as difficult as you might expect.

Here's how it works.

1. Call 712 858-8883 which is a standard phone number in Iowa.
2. You'll hear recorded instructions
3. Dial your phone number as you normally would from your US phone.
4. Start with 011 then the country code, area code and number.
5. Wait a few seconds
6. The call will be connected as usual.

You don't need to call from a computer or use any special adapter or software.

For many people the call to Iowa will be free with the wide availability of 'unlimited national calls' packages on fixed and mobile phones.

If you don't have such a package you could use a VOIP connection to reach Iowa at the lowest possible cost.

What's the catches?

There's a few things to keep in mind but no biggies.

• The only possible cost is the price of your phone call to the Iowa number - make sure you know how much that is.
• You can only call some countries, we've copied the current list below.
• You can only call landline numbers in those countries. Calls to overseas mobile phones are more expensive and therefore not covered by this service.

• The service will be available until at least 2010, according to the company.

Calls available to:

" Argentina , Australia , Austria, Bangladesh , Belgium, Bulgaria , Canada , Chile , China, Christmas Island , Cocos Islands, Colombia , Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia , Finland , France, Germany , Greece , Guam, Hong Kong , Hungary , Iceland, Ireland , Israel , Italy, Japan , Luxembourg , Malaysia, Mexico , Monaco , Netherlands, New Zealand , Norway , Panama, Peru , Poland , Portugal, Puerto Rico , Russia , San Marino, Singapore , South Korea , Spain, Sweden , Switzerland , Taiwan, Thailand , Turkey , United Kingdom, US Virgin Islands , Venezuela "

We assume they mean the 'Christmas Island' in the Indian Ocean, a territory of Australia and not the other island of the same name in the Pacific.

How are they making money?

It seems the income comes from a small 'call termination' fee that Futurephone gets for each call that they accept in Iowa. That fee is paid by your phone carrier and is not an direct charge to you.

It's possible Futurephone will add short advertisements in the future or leverage the traffic to their web site to sell other services, much in the same way that Skype started with free PC-to-PC calls and expanded their business from there.