John Gilmer wrote:
I guess I don't know much about the "business model" used by the VOIP
companies.

For example, Google provides its services for free in the hope that we will
glance it the paid ads. It hopes that the Gmail users will use web mail a
lot and thus view the ads rather than accessing it via a mail server (which
I do.)

If a company offers very low cost VOIP calls it still has the cost of
connecting to the conventional "wired" telephone network. Is this cost
trivial?

Most of the low cost voip services use "DID", where they
buy(rent) blocks of numbers in groups of 10, 100, or 1000 in
different area codes. These cost about 50 cents a month for
each number. They use a "soft switch" or "virtual
(phone)office" that provides internet connections to your
computer "softphone".

If you call a number from their line to another number that
is also their line, they handle the call "end-to-end" for
very very low cost. If the call is to a line at another
company, they share the cost, if it's to a traditional
(ilec) company they pay thru the nose to complete the call.

Caller id is delivered like cellphone calls, number only,
few are willing to pay the "per dip" charge to get the
matching name from the database, run by the ilecs.

They use the "number portability" system to allow you to use
your previous number with your new number. It's all a big
call forwarding scheme.

-- larry/dallas