But don't talk too long, please.

There are three catches to Jajah's new program: one, both parties must have signed up to the Jajah service, which is free; two, both VOIP accounts that Jajah connects must be actively used, or else the call will be charged a per-minute rate. Finally, the company has implemented a "fair use" policy to encourage customers to limit their talk time.

Jajah rolled out its VOIP program this past spring with a controversial privacy program that the company cleaned up to eliminate concerns.

Although Jajah is competing with hardware-based services such as Vonage and SunRocket, its closest competition appears to be companies like iSkoot, which use a VOIP back end to connect landline calls. Several tools, including browser plugins and extensions to Outlook and the Mac OS X address book allow the service to be used with other applications, effectively giving Jajah the "click-to-call" capabilities that eBay added to Skype.

The deal applies to calls placed within the top two zones of Jajah's tiered rate program. Specifically, consumers may call landline and mobile phones for free to and within the United States, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.

The plan also applies to landline calls only within: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela.

"Jajah's Free Global Calling Plan is the further realization of Jajah's vision of breaking down the barriers to global communication," said Roman Scharf, the company's co-founder, in a statement. "People have been predicting free phone calls for years, now Jajah is the first to actually make free phone calls a reality. With Jajah, you place a regular call and talk on your phone the way you always have; we simply ask that you dial the call from our website."

Jajah's web application allows users to register their home or mobile number. At the web page, a user is asked to log in and enter the destination phone number. The VOIP application will then ring the user's designated number as well as the other, and connect the two via the Internet, without needing a headset, VOIP router, or other hardware.

However, the promotion requires users to walk a bit of a tightrope. On one hand, an account must be "active".

"An 'active' account is one that was used in the past few weeks to make calls or send an SMS," according to Jajah. "If your account, or the destination number account is inactive, the call will simply be charged at Jajah's usual low rates," usually 2.5 cents per minute in most countries.

According to a company spokesman, whether a user's account is active or not will be indicated in the list of numbers contained within the address book -- if the user's number as well as the dialed number are indicated by green, underlined text, the call will be free. Otherwise, Jajah will apply the per-minute call, the spokesman said.

To limit abuse of the system, Jajah has also added a "fair use policy," also used by some ISPs, that asks customers to moderate their usage.

"The Jajah "Fair Use" policy asks our users to "play fair" and behave in a manner that best serves our greater calling community," according to the company. "We ask that you limit your free hours to about an hour a day, five hours a week, or about 1,000 minutes per month. If you use it more than that, we ask that you also use some paid Jajah services such as text messaging (or scheduled calling?) [sic] We can only offer the free service if enough people also use some paid services."

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