Pat Phelan (left with Shel Israel, author of Naked Conversations) is the founder of Yak4Ever. The service was previously known as AllFreeCalls before it was shut down earlier this year. Read our previous interview with Pat here.

What's happened since we talked to you last time?

Well, we were taken down by a number of USA based carriers. You know who they are; they refused to pay our bills and we couldn't keep the service running. We have a large 6 figure loss on our hands but are confident of recouping it.

We went back to the drawing board and launched allfreecalls in the UK and Ireland where we possess carrier licences. The response there encouraged us to retry the USA.

What reasons did the carriers have for shutting you down?

They said that we weren't actually terminating the calls in Iowa and that we were in breach of the Universal Service fund guidelines.

How was the service doing before this happened?

Incredible. It was multiplying by 50% every two days.

Any idea of how many users you had before you were forced to shut down?

We were doing 250 thousand minutes a day so I presume 100,000 users a week.

What are you doing differently with this US relaunch as yak4ever?

We are now positioning our self as an international bridge/conference provider. You don't get to use the service without signing up and users don't not have to enter any numbers.

Is the service safe from being shut down then?

Totally according to our legal advice. The FCC have come out last week and warned the carriers that the service is not illegal and not to dream of thinking of shutting it down. You can pick up more of this from gigaom.

Has the makeup of the company changed at all? How many people are working on this now?

It has. We are just in the middle of a huge ramp up. We are launching a wifi GSM product globally and are in the middle of recruitment.

And how many people?

13. We will go to 25 in the next 30 days.

Where is the company based? Do you also have offices elsewhere?

Company is based in Cork, Ireland with remote offices in Dublin and just expanding to London.

If you could go back in time, what would you have done differently?

We would have engaged the carrier in talks, we attempted to but were completely ignored.

What have you learned from this setback?

Try to engage rather than to rebel, our services will always be niche but we need to enlarge this niche market.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Just to says thanks to everyone who stuck by us, we were receiving 5000 well wishing emails a week at one stage.