FreeConnect’s Click-to-Call portal

FreeConnect is a service available to Australian businesses that works a bit like Freephone. Businesses receive calls from online visitors to their FreeConnect profile page. The idea is quite straightforward but the concept of a click-to-call portal seems to be the first of its kind.

Click-to-Call is yet to realize its potential. You can have plugins like Skype but the caller pays for the calls. There are click-to-call solutions available from VoIP providers that work pretty much like Freephone services i.e. calls are routed by the service provider to the numbers (either nominated by the business or assigned by the VoIP provider). FreeConnect effectively provides - all those businesses who sign up - the ability to turn their existing phone number to a Freephone number. It has gone for the portal approach rather eStara-like case-by-case approach whereby the vendor typically implements click-to-call capability over the client website.
However the weakness in this model is that unless a lot of businesses opt for the service, the portal does not have much to offer a visitor. There is little value in being able to call a hundred businesses for free. FreeConnect needs to find a way to offer calls to all businesses for free. They would obviously not be able to do it because there are PSTN interconnection charges involved here.

I think video enabled click-to-call application could do lot better within this model and there would be no PSTN interconnection charges to pay.