Internet phones and making voice calls over the Internet.

History

I remember years ago when I was a kid living at home with my parents and having to use their phone. In those days the household telephone was a closely monitored thing by my father. Phone calls had to be kept short and no long distance calls. In those days BT (British Telecom) had the monopoly and prices where sky high. Over the years more telephone companies started appearing and mobile phones became more and more common the price of telephone calls started falling.

I also remember before the Internet was commonly available I used to dialup Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) which where scattered all around the country. Doing this was very expensive and created a phone bill which nearly gave my father a heart attack.

After changing over to the Internet instead of BBS's it was much better because only one local telephone number appeared on the telephone bill instead of dozens of different numbers and codes for all over the country.

 

Subscription Broadband

Nowadays I have my own house with its own telephone line and bill plus I have broadband which does not use a telephone number. I am no longer charged every time I connect to the Internet, instead I pay a monthly subscription to have a permanent connection. My father on the other hand still uses a dialup modem to dial the internet and still tries to use it as little as possible. Neither I nor my brother have been able to convince him he would be better off with broadband.

I personally prefer a subscription base service where you pay a reasonable monthly fee and you can use it as often as you like. The telephones in the UK although much cheaper than they used to be are mostly still charged on a per call bases. So if you have a broadband connection to the Internet why not use it for some voice conversations as well.

 

MSN Messengers - Audio

One of the simplest ways to talk to someone over the Internet is to use the Audio feature in MSN Messenger.

Once you have selected the contact in your MSN messenger who is online, simply select "Audio" as shown above. All you need is a microphone and your PCs Speakers switched on with the volume down low. The volume on your speakers needs to be low so that the other person does not hear an echo of there own voice while talking. Hearing an echo of your own voice while talking can be very of putting and tends to slow the conversation down. A good way to eliminate this is to use head phones instead of PC speakers or use a headset with microphone.

 

Hand Held Internet Phones

A more phone like device for talking to people over the internet is the Skype phone shown below and others like it. These also require the install of software similar to MSN messenger. This is because there is no phone number for Internet phones, just external IP addresses which are mostly dynamic for home users.

 

 

 

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