$5 per minute calls to the US are now a thing of the past. The technology is now widely available to establish a voice connection with anyone in the world via the Internet.

"What would it cost to make a call to the States?" I asked a kindly-looking matron at the front desk of our Caribbean island resort. "It will be $4.85 a minute," she replied without any sign of embarrassment at this ridiculously high figure. Good thing I didn't need to call anyone in London. That was even more expensive.

We were enjoying Spring Break in the islands, the British Virgin Islands to be precise. The weather was warm, the sailing was excellent and I loved the idea of being far away from the office for an extended period. But I had to call in for a client conference and I didn't like the idea of paying that kind of dough for a simple phone call. I didn't dare use my cell phone. That would probably cost even more what with local access fees and the like.

I smiled and said "no thank you." The hotel had a free wireless connection and I had bought a new headset and microphone combination the night before we left. My plan was to use Skype for the call. With Skype, phone calls are either free or at most just a few pennies a minute. Watch out foreign telephone companies, your monopoly is crumbling.

Haven't heard of Skype? You will soon, and there are a host of other companies offering similar services. Skype (owned by eBay) is one of a new breed of telephone companies offering a voice connection with anyone in the world via the Internet (www.skype.com).

Skype (and others I will mention below) is built around VOIP technology, which is simply an acronym for "voice over Internet protocol." What it means is that with an Internet connection, a headset and a microphone (both of which are built into some computers) you can call anyone from anywhere. For free or darn close to it.

How Does it Work?

It was pretty simple. I started by going to Skype's Web site, www.skype.com. The first step was to download the free Skype dialing application. I wasn't the first; the program has been downloaded more than 226 hundred million times. The download process (Windows, Apple or Linux) took only a minute or so and then I opened to the following window:

The Skype Telephone Book

The program is simple and straightforward. The first step is to try a test call. Double click the test call entry or single-click it and then click on the green phone icon. Either way the system rings up Skype's London call center and presents you with a recorded message to test receiving sound quality. Then you get to record 10 seconds of your voice to make sure you will be heard clearly as well. If all is in order, you are ready to make your first call.

Skype offers two options for calls. If you are calling another Skype user who is also online, the call is free—to anywhere for as long as you like. This alone is mind boggling. People living tens of thousands of miles apart can speak to each other over the Internet without paying a penny to their respective telephone providers.

The second option is to call someone who does not have Skype (most of us at this point) via a land line. In this case you have to set up an account and pay a fee to connect. The good news is this fee is small and you can reach just about anyone. For calls in the U.S. and Canada, for example, you can set up an unlimited call plan for about $3 a month (as of this writing). International calls cost as little as 2.1 cents a minute (it varies by country and can be lower even) plus a small connection fee of a few pennies. The key is pennies, rather than dollars a minute.

So I dialed my office and reached our support desk. "Catalyst support, can I help you," said lead support technician David Fleming. "Dave. It's me talking over my computer!" I said, acting like the kid I really am. "Can you hear me now?" I couldn't resist.

Of course he could hear me. It seemed like a regular telephone call to him. But to me it was magic and way cool. I can still remember trying to place a call in a remote village in India 25 years ago. I had to go to a special telephone center in the town and it took more than 4 hours to place the call.

I felt much the same way 25 years ago calling home from India over an undersea cable line as I did talking to Dave Fleming using Skype. Imagine talking to someone through a cable stretched across the bottom of the ocean, or on the Internet.

As usual, this will soon be no more exciting cell phones, microwaves or even computers themselves. It may not yet seem like a big thing to you or your law office but the rest of the world has noticed. People are calling from all over the world and avoiding huge long distance charges. Indeed, when I went online to call home from the islands, there were about 6 million others using Skype. Imagine that. Believe me when I say that voice over internet protocol is big. It will do to traditional phone companies what email is doing to the postal service. People will save money as a result.

What Do I Need to Get Started?

Not much. All you really need is a headset so you can talk to your counterpart and hear what he or she has to say. This can be as simple as the ear plugs you use with your iPod, coupled with a simple hand microphone. Or, for about $25 you can pick up a combination headset and microphone like the one telephone operators use.

I packed a headset in my bag and was pleased that it could be folded into a relatively small space. Using my wife's Mac, all I needed to do was talk into the built in microphone. (If my Dell has one of those, I couldn't find it.) Ultimately, since I always carry ear phones and often carry the Bose Acoustic Wave headphones, I may just look around for a small microphone to carry with me.

What Is the Down Side?

Voice quality—at least when you have a slow connection. The wireless connection on the island was spotty and sometimes I had difficulty establishing and maintaining a connection. Back home I noticed that some calls could be a bit spotty too, with others sounding just fine. Clearly there can be variation depending on circumstances that might be important if you were making, for example, a key business call.

But compared to the alternatives, it sounded pretty good to me. Clearly it is a godsend for the millions of people on the road or living abroad that were prohibited by the costly per minute fees that the international telcos (monopolies all) were charging. And clearly Skype is causing a lot of heartburn for those same international telcos (and their owners).

Many have raised security concerns as well. While a full report on the security issues raised by a system like Skype, suffice it to say that Skype bypasses a number of normal security protocols like NAT, proxies and firewall ports. In essence, it acts more like a peer to peer connection and some see it as providing a hole that a hacker could drill into. At the least, security experts have cautioned against using Skype in a business setting.

Who Offers These Services

Although I have focused on Skype in this article, there are other options. The most obvious is called Gizmo Project. www.gizmoproject.com. This software works a lot like Skype and worked fine when I tested it as well. You should certainly check out this offering as well as Skype if you are interested in using this kind of technology.

You can also make these calls using various Instant Messenger programs like Yahoo and Microsoft's Live Messenger. I noticed that Microsoft offers calls to land lines using the Verizon Web Calling service.

Of course, a lot of people are using VoIP at home these days using one of the commercial providers. Thus, using my Comcast VoIP phone, I can make calls in the US for free as well. I haven't checked their rates for foreign calls yet.

Conclusion: This is Really Neat

In writing this article, I am not trying to direct anyone to Skype, nor am I offering a definitive comparison between the services. Rather, I found this new technology amazing, and it was certainly helpful to me when I need to connect from a remote island. You might find it handy one day too.