There are businesses that offer "free for life" local numbers in exchange for a large lump sum payment. We believe this is a bad deal for the consumer which is why we do not offer it.

In general, such services do not stick around for long for the simple reason that you cannot offer a service which costs money (even a little bit), provide customer support and incur all kinds of costs ad infinitum. All pyramid schemes sooner or later crash. The continuation of such a service rests on the ability of these firms to keep getting people to sign-up and/or get their customers to pay in other ways.

One such company offers free local calls but only in (and to) specific cities. If you ever call numbers outside those cities you end up paying very high rates. For instance, their rates with USA are $0.02 and $0.13 with the destinations that receive most calls, which is almost 10x more than what we charge. While offering a few free destinations, everything else is $0.02, which is more than 2X what we charge. Calling Romania 4021 is $0.0326 with us and $0.10 with them, which is more than 3X what we charge.

It's only a matter of time before most of their clients realize that they can use the Free Phone Line for what is free and save money for all other destinations using our no-commitment Outgoing Only plan.

Such free-for-life services tend to decay over time and eventually be discontinued. As people realize that they have less expensive options for long distance they will prefer those. More and more people start to get busy tones and be unable to use their service. The few people who don't mind subsidizing everyone else cannot keep the service viable and the offer will sooner or later fold.