Net Phones: Dialing Without Dollars
The latest Internet phones keep you in touch with friends and family--but don't try to make business calls yet. We test ten free or low-cost services to see which is tops.Steve Bass
"Hey, it's Steve," I shouted into my PC's microphone. "No, cousin Steve." I tried again. "From California." I was trying to talk to Judy in Manhattan. There was silence. And static. Then an abrupt click. We were trying to talk via a free Internet phone call--saving a few bucks but not exactly having a swell time. You've heard the hype about making cheap--even free--phone calls over the Internet, right? Well, for the price of a Net connection, you can save a bundle on phone calls by using any of more than a dozen available services. With some of these services, you can chew the fat with your buddy anywhere in the United States for as long as you want, and it won't cost you a nickel. Or spend $5--about half AT&T's weekday rate--to talk to someone at your branch office in Japan for an hour.
But you pay a price for free phone calls. In most cases, you have to put up with inconsistent--and sometimes very poor--sound quality. And with a few of the freebies, you can't escape glaring ads on your computer screen.
Now You're Talking
Internet phones have been around for years. I tested nine of them in 1997, and seven of those nine are no longer alive and kicking. At the time I reviewed them, the phones weren't something I'd use regularly--and they definitely weren't good enough for business calls. Several factors contributed to their downfall: Sound quality was poor, and both parties had to be online and using the same software. On top of that, you couldn't call someone who used an ordinary phone.
Now there's a new generation of services for calling over the Internet. I spent a dizzying month testing ten Internet phone services (see the features chart below), along with other enterprises such as Web-based answering services (see "Get a Virtual Secretary Online"). I also experimented with a dozen PC headsets and Net2Phone's Yap Jack, a hardware gizmo that uses the Internet to make calls without a computer. And I asked more than 1000 members of my Pasadena Users Group for feedback on the Internet phones they use.
Internet phones have come a long way in three years. You can now call your Uncle Sal, who doesn't own a PC and never will. And the sound quality has improved. Sure, sometimes you sound like you're calling on a chintzy cell phone from a closet in Lithuania--with cotton in your mouth. But when Internet phones work perfectly, which happens about a third of the time, calls on at least two Net phone services (namely, Deltathree and I-Link's TalkFree) sound almost as good as if you were on a landline. And you'll definitely save money. Using Internet phones to call numbers within the United States--and to call many overseas countries--can't get any cheaper than free.
Would I use an Internet phone for business--say, trying to close a sale with a new client? Nope, the technology is still too unreliable. But with a little planning, the right equipment, and a few tricks, Net phones are reasonably serviceable for calling friends and family around the United States and in other parts of the world.
Farewell, Ma Bell?
As Internet phone services improve, the marketplace is starting to boom. Dataquest, a research firm in San Jose, California, estimates that the telephony market, a $255 million business in 1998, will jump in value to $21 billion by 2003. Microsoft is grabbing a big piece of the pie by offering Microsoft Network Messenger users free long-distance Internet calls to numbers within the United States and Canada, using Net2Phone's technology. Nonetheless, traditional phone companies probably won't start losing customers for quite some time.
Pull back the curtains--or wires--and the technology behind Internet phone calls is easy to understand. You speak into your computer's microphone or headset; a program then digitizes your voice, divides the words into data packets, and sends them hurtling through the Internet toward the person you're calling. When the transmission arrives at the other end, a matching program or a hardware device reassembles the packets, and your friend hears your disembodied voice. If all the packets make it through okay, you sound great; if not, your buddy will hear echoes, distortion, or worse audio glitches.
How It Works
Internet phone services let you communicate in a number of ways. You can make an Internet call from one PC to another by dialing the Internet Protocol address of your friend's computer. The software lets you type in the digits of the IP address, and you start talking. Seven of the ten products that I tested permit PC-to-PC calling, and Firetalk offers PC-to-PC only--no PC-to-phone calls. Seven products let you place a call from your computer to your friend's regular phone. The PC-to-phone feature is astonishing, even to a jaded technodweeb like me. The other person (like Uncle Sal) needn't be near--or even own--a computer.
About half the products can be used directly from the companies' Web sites or upon downloading a small program. Some of the software that I downloaded, such as PhoneFree, MediaRing Talk, and Deltathree, ended up supporting better-quality connections than their respective browser-based programs.
When you sign up, brace yourself for some intrusive questions, typical of free services. (My profile? I'm an unemployed high-school grad with 16 kids. I was born on January 1, 1900, and have an income under $10,000. Ethical? Decide for yourself.)
Once you've registered, a telephone dialing pad pops up on your screen. Punch in a number--or grab it from the service's address book--and click the button to dial the number. Wait a second or two, and you're connected. All services (with the exception of TalkFree) let you talk with no time limit.
Free Means Free?
Every product except for Pagoo allowed free calls within the United States. Deltathree, HotTelephone.com, and MediaRing also let you call Canada for no charge. If you're in the habit of calling directory assistance to obtain listings in other states, you can cut out the frequently exorbitant cost of those calls with Deltathree, Pagoo, PhoneFree, or ZeroPlus, which provide free directory assistance--a nice plus.
All PC-to-PC products can make free international calls. To date, only three products provide free overseas PC-to-phone calls: HotTelephone.com, to over 30 countries worldwide; Dialpad, to Korea; and MediaRing to China (Web-based service only).
But if the country that you're calling isn't a freebie, an Internet call may not be worth the hassle. Lucky Dog 10-10-345 traditional phone service to Japan, for example, costs a scant 5 cents per minute more than Deltathree--one of the cheapest Internet phone services. Deltathree offers a 5-cent-per-minute rate on calls to England from California, only 5 cents per minute less than Working Assets' rate (see our comparison chart).
Calls With a Catch
All the Internet phone utilities I looked at offer free services--but there's a trade-off. Not only must you deal with the prying questions on the registration form, but you also must contend with the online advertising that most Web sites rely on to survive. Many of the programs have irritating banner ads that scream at you in fluorescent colors.
The worst offender was HotTelephone.com--it crammed two eye-popping, flashing ads into the browser dialing window, then proceeded to open another ad window when I completed the call. Minimizing a program's window doesn't always work. Dialpad, for instance, pops back up when a new ad is displayed, and PhoneFree refuses to minimize when you're on a call.
I-Link's TalkFree is a hybrid that uses a PC to initiate the call--but its similarity to other Internet phones stops there. I type my phone number into a field on I-Link's Web site, then enter my friend's number in another field. I-Link calls me first on my landline, asking me to confirm my friend's number (by hitting the pound key); the call goes through, and then my pal and I chitchat on our familiar phones. And yes, it's a freebie for both of us. Like other Internet phones, TalkFree uses the Internet for transmission. But because of I-Link's proprietary hardware and software, the voice quality is incredibly good. When I called my cousin in Manhattan using TalkFree, she thought we were connected on a landline. At worst, she said, I sounded as if I were using a good-quality cell phone (minus the cotton).
If it's that impressive, you ask, why isn't TalkFree a PC World Best Bet? It has several snags. First, it's still in a testing phase, and the service tends to get overloaded--I often had to try a dozen times before I could dial. Second, calls can last for 20 minutes, but you have to click on a pop-up screen every minute after the first 4 to extend your call time. This infuriating inconvenience makes TalkFree a no-no for business calls--but it's worth a try for chatting with family and friends. (I-Link regards TalkFree primarily as a promotional vehicle for its fee-based services.)
What You'll Need
To get started using an Internet phone service, all you need is a sound card with a microphone and speakers, a 56-kbps modem, an Internet connection (AOL is okay), and a browser. To increase your chances of making the service work right, though, you need to do a few things.
First, make sure your sound card is full-duplex, and upgrade if necessary. Most old sound cards are half-duplex--you'll know you have an older card if only one person can talk at a time, as with a two-way radio. If you're running at half-duplex, you might be able to fix the problem with a new driver. Check your sound card maker's Web site for an update. In my tests, I used both Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live and AWE full-duplex sound cards with no problem.
Next, you should consider buying a sturdy headset. This device will help block external noise, making it easier to hear the caller. And in most cases a headset is superior in quality to the sticklike microphone that sometimes accompanies sound cards. Even poor connections sound better over a good headset.
Finding a comfortable, technically solid headset involves trial and error. One of my favorites is Andrea's $40 NC-72 PC monaural. It's lightweight, and people said my voice sounded terrific. For comfort and quality, Telex's $90 H-551, a stereo USB headset, was another winner. Riparius's $25 telephone-like handset (sold by ZeroPlus) was hard to hold, and Labtec's $50 LVA-8550 was the worst of the bunch, with poor sound reception from the earphones and substandard audio transmission.
If you don't like headsets, try Net2Phone's $55 Yap Phone, a handheld device that looks like a phone and connects to your PC. Calling someone who owns a Yap Phone is free. If the person you're calling doesn't have one, calls cost a penny a minute in the United States and 3.9 cents or more a minute for overseas calls. But the Yap Phone performed no better than Net phones used with a headset, and working with it wasn't any easier.
Another Net2Phone product, the Yap Jack--which charges the same fees as the Yap Phone--doesn't require either party to have a PC, but the caller does need an Internet service provider. Attach a regular phone to the $160 Yap Jack, connect the Yap Jack to the wall jack, and start making calls. The Yap Jack was handy, but setup was arduous. It's also mighty expensive. Net2Phone offers a calling card, too. Its rates are about the same as those of online services, and it doesn't require you to make calls from your PC.
Net Connection Matters
If you have a dial-up connection, you must use a 56-kbps modem. Anything slower, and you'll experience dreadful voice quality--static, dropped words, and echoes. That said, even with a 56-kbps modem, I frequently had to play the CB radio game of saying "over" to signal I was finished speaking.
Dick Norton, a frequent Internet phone user in Burbank, California, uses Dialpad with his 56-kbps modem. He reports that his calls "typically last 30 to 40 minutes and are good quality on an amazingly consistent basis."
If you want your Internet phone to work like a regular phone--and you plan to use it on a regular basis--get a high-speed DSL or cable modem connection. Voice quality was substantially better (but still imperfect) in all my tests using cable or DSL.
I'm not the only one with a preference for a high-speed connection. "My uncle in Texas called me [in Canada] on his dial-up connection, and it was worse than a ham radio communication to Mars," says Shawn R. Ahmed, a student in Bedford, Nova Scotia. Yet when I used DSL to call Ahmed on Deltathree's PC-to-phone product (and again when he used his cable modem to call me), we understood each other easily.
As broadband ramps up, the technology behind Internet phone services will undoubtedly improve, but don't say adios to Ma Bell just yet. For the time being, most of us will use Internet calls only for shooting the breeze with friends and relatives. I predict, however, that in three years you'll probably make at least half your calls via Internet phones. But until Web-based telephony becomes as easy to use as regular phone service and offers the latter's crystal-clear quality, few of us will switch to it completely for our business calls.
Extra Gear
| Buying Information |
Andrea 800/442-7787 http://www.andreaelectronics.com |
| Buying Information |
Labtec 360/896-2000 http://www.labtec.com |
| Buying Information |
Net2Phone 888/581-0842 http://www.yapgear.com |
| Buying Information |
Telex 877/863-4166 http://www.computeraudio.telex.com |
| Buying Information |
ZeroPlus 301/601-8700 http://www.zeroplus.com |
Net Phones: Features Comparison(chart)
| Internet phone service | Free PC-to-phone calls in U.S. | Free PC-to-PC calls | Voice mail/personal address book | Comments |
| Best Bet Deltathree (http://www.deltathree.com) | Yes | Yes | Yes/Yes | PRO: Consistently good voice quality, clean interface, handy address book, free calls to directory assistance. CON: Limited speed dial, flashing ad. |
| Dialpad (http://www.dialpad.com) | Yes | Yes | Yes/Yes | PRO: Simple, easy-to-use interface; voice quality often good. CON: Company ad takes up lots of space; two separate windows--one for dialing, one for address book. |
| Firetalk (http://www.firetalk.com) | No1 | Yes | Yes/Yes | PRO: Instant messaging; easy to use once you learn to navigate. CON: Small Web-based window crammed with information; PC-to-PC calls only. |
| HotTelephone.com (http://www.hottelephone.com) | Yes | No1 | No/Yes | PRO: Free overseas calls. CON: No PC-to-PC calls; separate windows for dialing and address book; irritating flashing ads. |
| MediaRing (http://www.mediaring.com) | Yes | Yes | Yes/Yes | PRO: Cool-looking interface; free calls to China; lets you send e-mail messages with streaming technology. CON: Flashing ad; separate field for country code. |
| Net2Phone (http://www.net2phone.com) | Yes | Yes | Yes/Yes | PRO: Voice mail and faxing; free headset after you purchase call time. CON: Ad hogs screen; field where you enter number is somewhat awkward, can't use number keypad. |
| Pagoo Internet Phone (http://www.pagoo.com) | Yes | No1 | Yes/Yes | PRO: No ads; enables you to receive calls when you're online, Caller ID, address book, free calls to directory assistance. CON: No PC-to-PC calls. |
| PhoneFree.com (http://www.phonefree.com) | Yes | Yes | Yes/Yes | PRO: Voice mail and videoconferencing; video mail; buddy lists; free calls to directory assistance. CON: You can't minimize the program window when making a call. |
| TalkFree (http://www.I-link.net) | Yes | No1 | No/No | PRO: No headset, sound card, or other PC devices required; excellent voice quality; uses standard phones. CON: Still in beta phase, overloaded service, few extras, no PC-to-PC calls. |
| ZeroPlus (http://www.zeroplus.com) | No | Yes | Yes/Yes | PRO: Call forwarding, call waiting, Caller ID, buddy lists, speed-dial, online billing, white pages, handy text-chat feature. CON: Ungainly interface. |
Net Phones: How Much Can You Save? (chart)
| Phone service1 | New York | Canada | Denmark | United Kingdom | China | Japan |
| Internet | ||||||
| Deltathree | Free | Free | 8 cents | 5 cents | 21 cents | 8 cents |
| HotTelephone.com | Free | Free | Free | Free | Free | Free |
| MediaRing | Free | Free | 9 cents | 8 cents | Free | 11 cents |
| Net2Phone Yap Phone | 1 cent | 1 cent | 10 cents | 4 cents | 36 cents | 11 cents |
| Traditional | ||||||
| AT&T | 7 cents | 7 cents | 29 cents | 10 cents | 32 cents | 16 cents |
| Lucky Dog 10-10-3452 | 10 cents | 8 cents | $1.12 | 22 cents | 31 cents | 13 cents |
| Working Assets | 7 cents | 7 cents | 29 cents | 10 cents | 42 cents | 16 cents |
Best Bet: Deltathree
Internet phone quality still isn't thrilling.
But if you want to use one of these Net phone services regularly, your best bet is Deltathree. Through its consumer division, IConnectHere.com, Deltathree permits both PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone calls. You can call anywhere in the United States for free. And voice quality is consistently good. Deltathree also provides an easy-to-use interface with a handy address book.
Editor's Note: After we went to press, Deltathree changed its offerings, and its services are now fee-based.
Net Phone Tips
You may not be able to make Internet calls from work if your company's IS department uses a firewall. Check to see if a specific port on your PC can be opened for outgoing calls. Note: Any personal firewall you might use, such as Zone Labs' free ZoneAlarm, can accommodate Internet calls.
You can quickly switch between a headset and your PC speakers without crawling under your desk. Buy a $5 pair of 6-foot male/female extension cables at an electronics store. Plug the extensions into your sound card's speaker and microphone jacks. Do the same for the speaker's connectors and bring them near the front of your computer.
If you're using a 56-kbps connection and the voice quality is poor, hang up and try again. (Let's hope your friend doesn't mind the interruption.) Still awful? Switch to another of your ISP's dial-in numbers.
If you're having trouble with sound quality, experiment with the product's microphone and speaker settings while you're connected. For instance, Deltathree worked best with the mike set to low and the speaker to high.
Contributing Editor Steve Bass is president of the Pasadena IBM Users Group.
Get A Virtual Secretary Online
Need a personal assistant to answer the phone, route your calls, and take messages? A growing number of Web-based phone services have nifty features that handle those jobs.
I tried a handful of these fun and useful programs--BuzMe, Pagoo's Call Catcher, and CallWave--and each worked as advertised. While you're online (or on the phone) and somebody else tries calling, BuzMe intercepts the call and forwards it to a toll-free number; a pop-up window alerts you to the incoming call. You can send the caller to voice mail or reject the call entirely (if it's a telemarketer, say). With BuzMe, you can also use a regular phone to check for messages. The basic service is free, but it's sponsored by Web-based ads. For $5 per month you can pay to have ads turned off.
Like BuzMe, Pagoo's Call Catcherforwards your calls to a toll-free number, and a pop-up window alerts you, letting you hear your caller's message. But instead of bothering you with ads, Pagoo charges $5 per month for six months of service or $4 per month for a year. You can try it free for 30 days.
CallWave lets you hear your caller's message too, but its small window stays put on your desktop, blinking ads whenever you use the service. Unlike BuzMe, however, CallWave does not allow you to get rid of the ads.
Note: To use these cool tools, you must subscribe to your phone company's Forward Busy/No Answer Call Forward service. Depending on your phone company, these fees can start at as little as $1 per month (see also "Halfway-There Solutions to Internet Dial-Up Dilemmas").