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."

Cheap international calls!

[ajiva]

Cheap domestic calls are easy to get these days. Vonage, Skype, Cell Phones, etc all make it easy to call anyone in the USA (or at least 48 continental states). Its internation calls that are still a bit expensive. Granted things have gotten better as most international calls can be made for less than $0.50/minute and some in the low $0.20/minute. I remember when a phone call could cost upwards of $3/minute! Ouch!

How many digits in the phone number of the future?

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Just when you got used to 10 digit dialing, now even more ways to get a phone number. I'm sure we'll be running out of numbers in the next 10 years and see more digits added. Or will phone numbers become like social security numbers? You register and have one for life.

How many digits in a chinese phone number? Is their system capable of handling billions of numbers?

How doesn't this interfere

[B00yah]

With their partnership with SBC/ATT? Last time I checked, sbc's dsl was "sbc-yahoo dsl". Wouldn't selling a voip level product be a stab in the back of your partner? Maybe it's just me.

Re:free as in beer & speech

[Halloran]

I've known guildmates and guildmasters who've maintained logs of "interesting" Ventrillo communications with fellow members/officers using the "Record Conversation" feature.

Always pays to watch what you say.

Re:Who's Calling?

[grasshoppa]

Say it with me now: Skype != Voip

I have no problems with my callerid from my * box over voip lines.

Re:Who's Calling?

[windowpain]

Wait--let me get this right. None of your friends and none of your clients will even pick up the phone unless they can see who's calling? Who are your freaking clients, the Sopranos?

Problems with Skype

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been having endless problems with Skype over my reasonably fast DSL connection. Calls getting dropped, sounding like crap, skype locking up my computer on an almost daily basis. I need some other service provider that provides quality calls, has inbound numbers, does voice mail, and lets me call land lines for reasonable prices. Some of the problems are skype, some voip, maybe some decent standard will come out that has QoS.

Are you kidding?

[Potor]

voip is a godsend to those of use who constantly need to make intercontinental phone calls on our own nickle. skype has saved me so much money - hell, i used it for a year's worth of hour-long conversations between thailand and canada ... and now between belgium and canada.