FuturePhone is of the Past 

Paul Kapustka does a great job in GigaOM of dissecting the apparent fall of “free” international VoIP service provider FuturePhone.

It appears, Kapustka reports, that legal threats from AT&T against arbitrage players in the state of Iowa forced FuturePhone to shut down.

AT&T’s lawsuit, though by no means a slam-dunk, gives the company, Kapustka writes, “a legal reason to stall payments” in the millions for calls routed through FuturePhone’s Iowa servers. And, without the cash owed by AT&T, FuturePhone could not stay afloat.

Kapustka, who clearly understands the “journalism” part of “citizen journalist,” explains the arbitrage game well and sources the story throughout. Solid work.