FWD is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network and business venture owned by Pulver.com, Inc. and founded in 1994 by Jeff Pulver

Jeff Pulver

Jeffrey L. Pulver is an American Internet entrepreneur known for his work as founder and chief executive of pulver.com. He has written extensively on the need to develop an alternative to government regulation of the applications layer of Voice over Internet Protocol telephony.-Biography:Jeff...

, Brandon Lucas, and Izak Jenie.

The service provides voice communications between its subscribers worldwide, based on Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 standards. Limited inter-connections to the public switched telephone network

Public switched telephone network

The public switched telephone network is the network of the world's public circuit-switched telephone networks. It consists of telephone lines, fiber optic cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables, all inter-connected by...

 (PSTN) provide users the ability to receive direct-dialed

Direct Inward Dialing

Direct inward dialing , also called direct dial-in in Europe and Oceania, is a feature offered by telephone companies for use with their customers' private branch exchange systems...

 calls from PSTN-landline

Landline

A landline was originally an overland telegraph wire, as opposed to an undersea cable. Currently, landline refers to a telephone line which travels through a solid medium, either metal wire or optical fibre, as distinguished from a mobile cellular line, where transmission is via radio waves...

 users, as well as place calls to toll-free numbers in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and other countries.

Pursuant to a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission

Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

 (FCC) on February 12, 2004, the Wireline Competition Bureau considers FWD to be an information service rather than a telecommunications service. This ruling follows a petition

Petition

A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer....

 by Pulver.com on February 5, 2003 seeking a declaration of this nature. A similar petition by AT&T

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

 remains under consideration.

On September 27, 2005, the company changed its name from Free World Dialup to FWD. A servicemark for the new name was granted on April 20, 2004. According to the registration record, the servicemark is not an acronym: the letters stand for nothing at all. The company later removed all references to Free World Dialup from their website, although the domain name www.freeworlddialup.com still resolves to the site.

FWD is connected to other VoIP networks by IPeerX, a VoIP peering company.

Free World Dialup has closed open enrollment of new members to focus on HD content and services.

This Service is shut down

Please note that this company obviously doesn't offer the VoIP Service any more and that this company seems to be shut down. The domain doesn't show its offer any more and even not any page from it since March/30/2010.

Annual charge

On August 8, 2008, the company announced they would charge a $30 (US) annual membership fee. Following the implementation of a membership fee the service ran into technical issues eventually resulting in it going offline completely.

FCC decision

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is quoted as stating the following upon the FCC decision to characterize FWD's service as an information service: "Despite attempts to characterize this Order as limited to the specific facts of Pulver.com's FWD, I am concerned that the decision speaks much more expansively. By deciding the statutory classification of Pulver.com's service as an interstate information service, the Order raises a host of questions about the continuing relevance of those most fundamental telecommunications policy objectives that Congress has entrusted to this Commission."

External links

• FWD, official site
• Pulver.com, official site