Yahoo! Messenger Gets Phone Service

prostoalex writes to tell us that Yahoo! has launched a new phone service attached to their Messenger service. From the article: "The calls have to be initiated from a PC, but can be made to traditional landline phones and cellphones. Yahoo customers can receive calls from those phones, as well. Yahoo will charge 2 cents a minute for domestic calls, on top of the monthly $2.99 fee. Per-minute charges to 180 other countries will vary. It won't charge to receive calls."

free as in beer & speech

[flogic42]

Screw $0.02/minute, Ventrilo [ventrilo.com] is free and much less likely to be wiretapped!

Re:Numbers?

[Adriax]

Landlines can't call yahoo accounts. Read the summary, it says the calls have to be innitiated by the yahoo account.
The setup is like NAT, you can call out but they can't call in.

It's always hackable

[wurp]

and *not* hackable!
It's always hackable [spoofcard.com]. Your grandma can hack caller id on a regular phone. Your standards are higher for the brand new technology?

Re:Cheap international calls!

[VP]

Packet8 [packet8.net] has most international calls for less than $0.10/minute, most of Europe for less than $0.05. I don't know where you are getting the $0.50/minute - even the old phone companies don't charge that much anymore...

Re:Numbers?

[eln]

From the summary:

The calls have to be initiated from a PC, but can be made to traditional landline phones and cellphones. Yahoo customers can receive calls from those phones, as well.

The way I read this, Yahoo customers can call landlines and cellphone, and can also receive calls from those phones (meaning landlines and cellphones) as well. If that is accurate, presumably Yahoo phone subscribers would need a phone number for their PC, unless the plan is going to work like a calling card or something, where people would call a central 800 number and dial in a code to connect to a particular Yahoo user. That seems way too cumbersome, though.

Re:free as in beer & speech

[Mydron]

Correction, in most states its illegal to do so without notifying a party. Exceptions [callcorder.com] are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.

In other words, if you are a party to the conversation, feel free to record. You can't record your two neighbors having a private conversation but you can record the conversation you have with your neighbor(s).

Re:Doggone it

[IANAAC]

I need clients that talk to one another, not 12 different clients that don't.

That's where SIP comes in. It's been around for awhile and there are many, many clients on every platform from which to choose. You may not like the format of the contact you're trying to call, but it works pretty reliably.