United Online VoIP Product a Sign of What's to Come With Skype? (UNTD 3Q05 Conf Call Quotes)

United Online (ticker: UNTD) CEO Mark Goldston describes his company's new PC-client-based voice-over-IP (VoIP) product on his Q3 conference call. There are two noteworthy features of the product. First, it works well with dial-up connections, and thus also allows broadband users to make calls even when downloading large files. (Note: working with dial-up opens up target markets in countries without broadband.) Second, there's a fascinating revenue generating idea here: users can program their PC VoiP clients to forward calls to their landlines and cell phones. And United Online bills for that. This is surely a sign of how software-based VoIP clients will make further incursions into the traditional telephony market. Expect Skype (now owned by eBay) to do the same. Here are the extracts from the call:

NetZero Voice is designed to be access agnostic and to work over both dial-up and broadband, so the spectrum of appeal for this product is as broad as it can possibly be.

NetZero Voice can be used to call anyone, anywhere, any time, absolutely free, from one computer to another using the NetZero free VoIP software… For those who’d like the opportunity to call someone on a landline or a cell phone from their computer or to receive calls on their computer from a landline or a cell phone, NetZero Voice will enable that…

…We also give you a personalized phone number with all of our pay plans that lets you choose the area code and the number of your choice, and you use that number as your primary means of communication through something we call our “find-me/follow-me