Review
Created: January, 2000
Telegrams were made extinct by fax technology. With the arrival of the Internet, one can't help wonder if voice phone calls will be next.
Enter Net2Phone, the latest effort to steal the long distance call business away from telephone companies. The free software package, which can be downloaded from http://www.net2phone.com, gives you the ability to turn your personal computer into a telecommunications tool.
It supports voice and fax calls, as well as PC-to-PC calls and even supports users of ICQ, a technology owned by America Online and Times Warner that allows trans-Net voice and text communication in real time.
Net2Phone works with an Internet-connected PC that has speakers, a microphone and a sound card. The gear, along with Net2Phone technology, patches your call across the Internet to the local telephone service of the person you are calling, who talks to you on a regular phone.
The call is charged a discounted, per-minute fee.
For example, a Net2Phone call to Hong Kong from the U.S. costs five U.S. cents per minute. A Net2Phone call from any country outside the U.S. to Hong Kong costs eight U.S. cents per minute.
The software's sound quality isn't always as good as a traditional telephone-to-telephone connection over conventional exchanges. At times, incoming voice sounds as if it's inside a tin can, and it occasionally cuts out. But it's as good or better than the sound quality on a digital cellular phone call.
Outgoing sound is similar. A colleague receiving a Net2Phone call from this reviewer on his desk phone described it as if "you're on a cellular phone far away."
Ironically, the call was made from an office across the hall.
A Net2Phone representative said the sound quality will vary, depending on what else is running on your computer at the time of the call. Connection speed will also affect quality.
A high-speed cable -- or digital subscriber line (DSL) connection (used to test the product) -- will result in better quality than a slower, dial-up modem connection.
The Net2Phone fax service that's build into the software sends any text document to any fax machine in the world. Again, the quality isn't as good as a fax modem connections, but the document that arrives is readable and has a cover sheet that can be customized.
The software includes buttons to connect to the Net2Phone Web site so you can buy call time and retrieve your call summary. Net2Phone also has a rudimentary speed-dialer feature and keeps track of the numbers you've called most recently. For privacy, there's also a microphone mute button.
The product also has a voice mail feature -- called VoicEmail -- that allows you to record a voice message and send it as an attachment to a friend's e-mail address. This seems like a shameless attempt at marketing Net2Phone, because it requires the recipient to install Net2Phone on his computer to listen to the message. It is free between Net2Phone users though, as are VoicEmails to ICQ users.
For the techno-curious who don't want to spend any money, Net2Phone can be downloaded and tested for free with any toll-free number in Canada or the U.S.
Reviewer's rating: 3.5 / 5
Comments: Applause warranted for providing easy-to-use software that competes with traditional telecom companies. Voice quality needs to be more consistent, but the low, per-minute pricing makes Net2Phone a deal for non-mission-critical long-distance calls.
Price: The software is free, but calls are charged by the minute, based on where the call originates and which country is dialed. A rate chart is available at http://www.net2phone.com. Overseas calls made from inside the U.S. get a better rate.
than those made from outside the U.S.
Domestic calls within the U.S. cost 3.9 U.S. cents per minute. Canadian domestic calls are approximately 14.5 Canadian cents per minute.
Fax rates between the U.S. and Canada are the same as domestic calls originating in either country.
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