AOL will continue planting seeds beyond its formerly walled garden by offering a free voice-over-Internet phone service called AIM Phoneline. The service will be an extension of its popular instant messaging service and will provide users with a local phone number and the ability to receive incoming phone calls from anywhere. AOL will also offer an enhanced subscription version for $14.95/month which will allow subscribers to make local and long distance calls from their computers.

AIM (along with the other major portals) already sports talk features but Phoneline will be a more robust version which will compete with eBay's Skype as well as traditional telephone services. In addition, AIM Phoneline will be a part of a broader strategy to leverage AOL instant messaging that will include a social networking channel as well (stay tuned for more details on that one as they arise).

Continue reading AOL to offer free phone service via AIM

AOL to offer free phone service via AIM originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 05 May 2006 11:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.