TALK IS CHEAP

Not too long ago, when I was a kid (okay, long enough ago), telephones were among the most sturdy items in the average home. They came in one color – black – and had heavy rotary dials that forced you to keep your fingers in good shape if you wanted to make a phone call.

Those phones were near-indestructible – as was the Phone Company (there was only one). The Phone Company was sort of a corporate “benevolent despot” – as long as you paid it tribute (and money, in the form of your monthly bill), it gave you the ability to make phone calls, and would dispatch a serious-looking fellow to fix your phone or line in the rare event that something went wrong. Rock-solid, that system was. Not like what we’ve got today, unfortunately.

I don’t know about you, but we keep having bad luck with the cordless phones we’ve been buying for a long time now, having to replace them every year or so with new models.

True, prices for calls have gone down, but you don’t get what you don’t pay for; the cheaper the service, like with long distance, the longer you’re kept on hold for a service agent, and the more buttons you have to press on the automated menu when you try to get hold of a human being in order to explain what you need.

This may no longer be true in America, but in Israel competition against Bezeq – The Phone Company – is just beginning. I must say the competition in cellphone operators make getting service much easier.

Many of you have read of VOIP – Voice Over Internet Protocol. That’s what this column is about. This week we’ll discuss the originator and largest company in the field.

If the people you talk to on a regular basis have computers, you can talk to them for free, through your computer’s microphone. If you want to be ‘fancy’ or ‘stylish’, you can use a telephone that hooks into your PC’s USB port.

The program that made this mode of phone chatting a must have for computer users is the free basic version of Skype.

You can find Skype at skype.com:

Notice my curser is on ‘learn more’. I suggest you read it before you download Skype. It’ll save me from rewording their explanation, and it’ll answer most of your questions.

Now download the version suitable for your Operating System and browser.

Skype has millions of users all over the world. With Skype, you can ‘call’ other Skype users for free by ‘dialing’ from your computer. This is not only useful, but cheap, since you’re utilizing the Internet connection you’re already paying for.

Skype: a complete ‘phone suite’
Until recently, holding a full fledged phone conversation over the Internet has only been something the technically adept would even attempt. It had a reputation for lousy sound quality, “dropouts” (where snippets of conversation get lost in the ether), and “hesitation,” where the person you’re talking to only hears what you say a few seconds after you’ve said it.

But the truth is that VOIP – and Skype – have made great technical strides in the past few years. Skype itself is barely two years old and already there are several thousand users here in Israel alone.

We know that Skype is ready for “prime time” since it was just bought out by no less than Internet auction kings eBay for a whole bunch of money ($2.6 billion!). If it’s good enough for eBay, I guess, it’s good enough for the rest of us.

And it really is. If you tried Skype when it first came out and were disappointed, you’ll be pleasantly surprised if you download version 1.3 or 1.4 beta, which have crystal clear sound and solid connections, thanks to the significant improvements in VOIP technology in the past couple of years.

Skype has added lots of services to its features list just in the past year; there’s conference calling, call forwarding, and integration with Outlook and Internet Explorer. There is even a wireless version of Skype for use with a WiFi laptop – or a WiFi-enabled Pocket PC PDA! It’s a much cheaper way to get a wireless phone-enabled PDA than buying a Treo.

Because Skype is a computer program that can take advantage of other PC technologies besides voice Internet communication, and because it has a huge user base, there are all sorts of add-on programs that will make your Skyping experience more rewarding and productive.

In fact, some of these add-ons replicate services Skype offers but charges money for. (You didn’t think eBay would drop a couple of billion on a company they can’t make money off of, did you?)

You see why I suggested reading the information page before downloading. Imagine how long this column would be if I explained the details of the last several paragraphs.

Skype, for example, has a voicemail service, but you can download Pamela and install a free answering machine that records unlimited numbers of calls, and lets you leave a specialized message in 32 languages.

Jybe is a collaborative surf/chat tool that lets groups of users work on an on-line project together, or in the case of Skype, initiate and run conference calls/document sharing/Web surfing on a Skype call.

Video4IM
will transform your Skype audio connection into a video phone, integrating images from your Webcam into the Skype interface.

DialMP3 lets you dial into your Skype account and listen to MP3s on your computer.

iSkoot offers free call forwarding, as well as the ability to make calls to Skype users from any cell phone, for a small fee.

It should be noted, though, that despite much speculation in the computer press, nobody knows what eBay’s plans are for Skype, so it would be a good idea to download any Skype freebie you’re interested in sooner than later.

Bye, bye Bezeq?
If you really decide you like Skype, you might even consider using it for all your telephony needs, replacing the regular (PSTN) “land line” you’re paying The Phone Company for. With SkypeIn and SkypeOut premium services, you can do just that.

SkypeIn gives you a virtual phone number that people using PSTN phones can dial in order to be connected to your Skype account – similar to popular VOIP services like Packet 8, which allow you to have a virtual phone number in the US.

But Skype’s US and European virtual numbers are a lot cheaper than any VOIP service, at 30 euros per number annually (although VOIP services generally give you lots of free minutes per month to make calls with, depending on your plan).

There’s an interesting comparison of VOIP services (Vonage, in this case) and Skype at Sitetube.

You can also make outgoing Skype calls to regular phone numbers, using the company’s SkypeOut service, which charges a per-minute fee for local and international calls.

If you really want to go whole hog with Skype, you’ll probably want to work out a system whereby you can make calls while not being tethered to your PC. For that, you’ll need a gadget that, while in its infancy, is going to be getting a lot more buzz in coming months – a “telephone” you plug into the USB port of your computer that hooks into Skype, letting you dial calls to both Skype and PSTN phones!

Skype itself sells some of these devices, and there are cheaper versions (Google for “VOIP phones” and see what comes back). Some of them are even “dual use” phones, which let you hook into the land-line network, as well as calling Skype users for free.

Finally, we can use that old adage – “talk is cheap” – and really mean it!

Again, you can download Skype for free for Windows 2000/XP, Mac OS X, newer Linux systems, and Pocket PC PDAs.

In recent months, several competitors to Skype have emerged – Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others. It’s too soon to compare them yet. I’ll do so when the competition is more developed.

Dennis Turner