VoIP basics: How to make free phone calls via the Internet

The first time my daughter went overseas with her college classmates, I called our cellphone company to inquire about international connection plans. For just $6 a month, they told me, I could get "discounted" calls to wherever my daughter traveled.

What I bought

Some $200 in "discounted" calling charges later — which added up to less than two hours of phone time — I realized that what I bought was an expensive lesson on international dialing. I've since learned that keeping in touch with friends and relatives overseas can be cheap — sometimes even free — but you may need to learn how to talk into your computer screen.

"Making calls without an overseas number is frightfully expensive," said Mark Lowenstein, managing director of Mobile Ecosystems, a Boston telecommunications consulting firm. "The best way to call is on a laptop."

If you're under 25, you probably know about something called VoIP. If so, stop reading and hand this column to someone older and less technologically savvy. This is a beginner's guide to making phone calls on your computer using Voice over Internet Protocol.

Voice over Internet converts the sound of your voice into a digital signal that travels over the Internet and is received just like an ordinary phone call. In some cases, you can make these calls using a pre-programmed phone that looks and feels just like the phone you're used to. But, more often, you'll be making calls directly from your computer or laptop.

That's because calling internationally from an ordinary land line or cellphone can cost upward of $2 a minute, even after buying the discounted calling plan. Buy AT&T's World Traveler plan for $5.99 a month and your international cell roaming rates when calling your child in Australia, for example, would drop from $1.69 a minute to $1.29 a minute. That means you'll still pay $77.40 an hour.

You'll need a late-model computer or laptop — ideally with a built-in Web cam — and a high-speed Internet connection to make it work. If either your computer or your Internet connection is slow, your phone calls can freeze up and make communication difficult, if not impossible.

To sign up, go to Skype.com and click on "get Skype." The company's software will automatically detect whether you're calling from a Windows-based computer or a Mac and will suggest the proper software. You're going to click on "download now" and click again to accept Skype's "terms of service." (The terms of service are largely boilerplate, but they specify that Skype can't be used to replace your land line because it doesn't offer emergency phone services, such as 911.)

The friend you want to call happens to be online

If the friend you want to call happens to be online, your Skype call will pop up on that person's screen. All your friend has to do is click on "answer" and the built-in microphones on your computer or laptop will allow you to hear each other. If you've chosen "video call," your Web cam will allow you to see each other too.

Need to call someone who isn't online? You can click the "call phones" button with Skype and plug in the phone number. But that call will cost you. The company's "unlimited" calling plans start at $2.99 a month, said Simon Longbottom, Skype's director of product marketing. Calling without a plan costs about 2 cents a minute.

Longbottom says Skype continues to work on call quality, but acknowledges that slow Internet networks — or even straying too far from the source of the wireless signal — can affect performance.

Still, my $200 European phone bill could have been cut to $2 using a VoIP service like Skype. I'm willing to put up with a little bit of funkiness to save $198.