Free calls without the internet possible but only if you'll listen to an ad first

Trust college students to come up with innovative ways to save money. Only the latest product of dorm room brainstorming sessions will be of interest to a lot of people beyond twentysomethings.

Three students of the MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology in Bangalore, Yashas Shekar, Vijayakumar Umaluti and Sandesh Eshwarappa have developed a free international voice calling service, the_Economic Times_ reports. Named FreeKall the service is not dependent on internet access, unlike other free calling platforms like Skype and Viber.

Once a user dials any of the provided Bangalore numbers, the call is disconnected after one ring. The user gets a call back and is asked by an automated system to entire the desired number. And that’s it.

More from Startups

Pune-based startup, Guruji on Demand, to launch online funeral management service in times of social distancing NASSCOM teams up with IoT, AI startups to provide low-cost solutions to combat COVID-19

[caption id=“attachment_78372” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational Image. Thinkstock[/caption]

Sounds too good to be true, right? It is. Calls are interrupted by advertisements every two minutes - it’s how the FreeKall generates revenues.

The week-old service is currently in the testing phase but has already handled about four lakh calls so far, with the servers having crashed about seven times since then. At the moment, unregistered users can make calls that are three minutes in duration, while registered users get 12 minutes a call. FreeKall is working to remove the cap on call durations within the next month and international calling services will be rolled out soon.

Ranjit Cherickel, a veteran telecom profession, who has invested Rs 10 lakh in FreeKall said,“I expect them to expand internationally in less than a year. This will work well in developing countries and potentially in high-tariff developed markets.”

Read the entire_Economic Times_article here.