Net phone calls catching on

I'm a big fan of the San Jose Merc's Personal Technology section (for years I edited and designed the Science/Medicine/Technology pages of the Sacramento Bee), so I look forward to it every week. Today they've got:

- Mike Langberg on a $10.99 digital camera.

- Dawn Chmielewski on home networking.

- Marcelo Rodriguez on Internet phone calling. (You won't find it on the Merc's technology front, oddly, even though it was the lead story in today's Technology section.) Excerpt from the latter:

... Early users were limited to talking only to others with the exact same software setups. There were no phone numbers and the parties had to make arrangements to be online at the same time.

That's all changed. Largely as a result of readily available broadband Internet connections and low-cost telephone appliances that attach to any home computer network, it is now possible to use VoIP to make phone calls to any phone number in the world using the trusty traditional handset, even a cordless one. What's more, VoIP service comes with features the traditional telephone companies are not even able to offer and at costs that are a fraction of the typical residential phone bill. ...

If you've made any international calls over the past year, chances are that you used VoIP without even knowing it. Major international phone carriers such as Sprint and AT&T have been quietly converting much of their international telephone traffic to the Internet, a much cheaper method of transport.