A Madison company says it has developed a better way to keep in touch with friends and family in other countries.

JumperTel Communications says its "plug and play" phone system is inexpensive and easy to use.

Just plug the JumperPhone 100 into a computer's USB port and the software will guide the user through installation in about one minute, JumperTel says. Consumers can make as many long-distance calls as they want, and talk for as long as they want, for just $12 a year, plus the one-time $21.99 cost for a phone.

"We have what we consider to be a very unique approach to this," said Dennis Barnum, chief operating officer.

The catch is: calls can only be made among JumperTel subscribers. "We decided to make it a closed system. That way, we can keep the costs down," Barnum said.

The JumperPhone 100 is about the size of a regular cell phone but thicker. For now, it is a basic model, but future versions will be designed to work with Apple's Mac computers and have voice mail, three-way calling and other features, Barnum said.

The 10 digit serial number on the back of the telephone is also the phone number. Calls are routed along a secure network that protects the user's privacy, JumperTel says.

Of the seven company founders, all but one are UW-Madison graduates. They developed the system because one of the founders, Anand Chhatpar, chief executive with BrainReactions, a Madison brainstorming company, couldn't talk to his family in India because alternative Internet-related phone services were too complicated for his parents, Barnum said.

Optimo Investments, an investment firm in Abu Dhabi, whose executives are UW grads, put up most of the $150,000 to get the company started. The phones are manufactured in China but the software was developed in Madison by JumperTel.

About 100 of the prototype phones began testing in March. "We used alumni to help test the system all over the world," said Ron Miller, vice president of sales and marketing.

The JumperTel 100 went on the market in October with sales designed to occur primarily over the Internet.

The idea, company officials said, is to target people with family members or friends in other countries, members of the military stationed overseas and parents of children, for example, on an exchange or year abroad study program.

"We don't want to compete with the (big) phone companies. We wanted to provide an inexpensive and very efficient way to phone long distance," Miller said.

JumperTel will have to sell 15,000 phones to break even, Barnum said.

Barry Orton, UW-Madison telecommunications expert, said on initial glance, the concept "sounds very promising."

JumperTel uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. That's similar to systems such as Skype, which offers free audio and video calls for Skype-to-Skype users who download the company's software or low rates for calls from a computer to a phone.

Barnum said some people, such as Chhatpar's parents, find Skype's installation too complicated. International calling cards can be expensive.

Ankur Malhotra, who saw a demonstration of JumperTel, said he and his wife, Ashwini Rao, have parents in India and friends around the world and often spend $25 to $30 a month on international calls.

They use a variety of phone services, including Skype and alternative services with rates of about 4 to 6 cents a minute. It's a lot less than $2 a minute Malhotra said he paid when he came to the U.S. a decade ago. But there are some challenges.

"Quality of service is normally the biggest issue," Malhotra said. Calls drop off and voice quality can vary, he said. Also, for free calls on Skype or JumperTel, both parties have to be connected to their computers and logged in at the same time. "So you lose the spontaneity of the call," he said.

Malhotra, who manages business development for 5Nines Data, a Madison company that offers VoIP service for businesses, said JumperTel's $12 a year price tag is "very appealing" but he would have to check the quality.

For ease of use, it's hard to beat an iPhone, Malhotra said. But there can be drawbacks even with the popular Apple mobile phone and Internet device. On a recent trip to New York City, Malhotra said his iPhone calls didn't go through. So many people were talking or checking their "apps" (applications), he said, all the lines were busy.

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