How cheap do you want your phone cost be? How about free? Gizmo Project, a VoIP (voice over IP) company that is committed to open standards, has recently announced their all calls free plan, that let you call landlines and mobile phones free from your computer, with some conditions.

The little fine print after bold typed FREE says:

The All Calls Free plan applies when both call participants are registered and active Gizmo Project users. A person is considered active when they are making phone calls with Gizmo Project on a regular basis. We reserve the right to limit call length. In countries where free phone calls are not available, when calling a non-free number in an All Calls Free-listed country, or when calling a non-Gizmo Project user, calls are subject to our regular low rates.

Basically it is their strategy to encourage sign ups. In order to call landline number free, that number must belong to an existing contact in your roster. How to get contacts into your roster? Ask your families and friends to sign up so you can them for free. How can they stop someone by themselves signing up accounts for all their friends, family members and house pets? Account must be active, i.e. using Gizmo client for voice calls on unspecified “regular basis”.

Well, not that bad actually. I was at my parents’ place on the Gold Coast so I quickly install them on my mum’s notebook and gave her instructions on how to use it to make free calls. We add each other on our installations — and now I can call my Gold Coast landline number for free, whenever my computer is on.

Installation is easy, and the application is available in either Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Interface is not as “snappy” as Skype and other VoIP software I use, however it is more “open” than Skype, which uses its own proprietary P2P VoIP protocol. It uses SIP which is the industrial standard for VoIP. It not only lets you call other Gizmo users and landline/mobile phone numbers, it also lets you dial other SIP phones.

One thing Skype excels is its firewall penetration — it almost-always works even in heavily armoured corporate firewall. Gizmo Project claims to have the same level of penetration, but I have yet to test it. Might give it a try after getting back to work tomorrow.

Quality-wise, it is a bit disappoiting when calling Australian landline numbers. Quality and latency not as bad as VoIP Stunt (BetaMax company also provides free landline calls), but you can still feel significant delay and echo (tested on my 1500k/256k Exetel ADSL line). However Skype Out is no better last time I tried, and the call rates is slightly more expensive. I have not had an opportunity to test out PC to PC calls, but Skype is “good enough” for me in that domain.

Gizmo Project does reserve a right to limit the length of those free calls though. Unlike VoipStunt who said explicitly 300 minutes per week, there is no clear indication of how long you can make those free calls.

Still, it’s nice to call family and friends for free, even when they are not in front of computers. You just need to get them have an active Gizmo Project account.