I asked Jeff Pulver to tell me what Bellster is all about in order to avoid any guesswork. Here's his answer:
Bellster - Fact Sheet
-----------------------
Bellster: A P2P communications network that empowers people to share a phone line with other like-minded individuals around the world for free. Those who share access to a line, in turn, have the ability to access the lines of all of the other nodes around the world. This is a non-commercial activity designed to help connect people with people and maximize the value of the network.
The Bellster Network manages the active directory of available endpoints and routes the calls across the organic communications network that makes up Bellster.
Beta Launch - weekend of January 22, 2005
Current number of registered nodes: 222 (as of 10.45 am ET on 24-jan-05)
Number of active nodes: 46 (as of 10.45 am ET on 24-jan-05)
Bellster was influenced by the goals of the original Free World Dialup project which started in October, 1995. With the beta launch of Bellster.net we are finally able to offer a peer-to-peer network where members of the network can share their PSTN access with each other. Think of a ham radio "phone patch"
that uses the internet to connect two people together.
Bellster is based on Asterisk.
If we are successful, we will be bring 'disruptive intermediation' to internet consumers around the world.
For more information please visit:
http://www.Bellster.net