| Wednesday, January 7, 2009 |  |
Talk Is Cheap (or So It Sounds on Internet Phones)
Although voice on the 'Net seems revolutionary, a similar replacement of text by talk occurred more than a century ago: The telegraph was barely old enough to vote when the newly invented telephone shouldered it aside. But while yakking on the phone was simpler than tapping out Morse code, the same cannot be said for Internet telephony. And despite the copious talk about cheap telephone talk, Internet phones may never do unto phones what phones did unto telegraphs. Still, Internet phones are improving. A couple of years ago, both parties needed computers; that's only true of the person placing the call now. And the price is right—many services allow you to call Onalaska or Tuscaloosa or Kalamazoo for nothing. (Given the meltdown in e-commerce, however, there's no saying how long advertising will support free service.) We saw per-minute prices ranging from 4.9 cents for Europe to 25 cents for remote regions—well below conventional phone prices.
But the benefit carries a cost: Some of those data packets arrive before others, causing Internet calls to be plagued by echoes, delays, and dropouts. When the network is idle, call quality is acceptable. Half a second later, when the 'Net gets busy, you may think you're phoning a submarine in the Caribbean from a prison cell in Azerbaijan—with the call bouncing erratically from an aging satellite. Sure the price might be cheap, but exactly how cheap do you want to sound? Pretty cheap, in some cases. A few high-tech companies have unplugged their long-distance service in favor of Internet phones. Before you consider doing likewise, join us for a quick test drive of Internet telephony. The sound of surfing
Although you technically don't need anything else, most phone sites push headsets to cut annoying echoes and feedback. We started our journey by wasting 10 minutes at Go2call.com, which, much too late in the process, revealed that it (like every other site we visited) did not work on Mac (or Linux) systems. When we returned to the 'Net with a Windows machine, the Go2call server was no longer responding. And since it charged $12 for 360 minutes of domestic calling—close to our regular phone rates—we surfed on. After downloading the 1-MG (megabyte) software package at Phonefree.com, we ran the six-step installation. The second try worked, and we filled out an intrusive survey that gathers statistics so Phonefree can attract advertisers: our income, date of birth, number of children, hobbies and interests, even the make of car (Honey: I can't remember: Is that rust-bucket in the driveway a Jaguar or a Ferrari?).
After all that clicking and keyboarding, the euphoria of success would probably have compensated for the "speaking-tube" sound quality—if only we'd had a two-way connection. Since our voice did not go through, we hung up and tested our connection, microphone, and speaker with the comfortingly titled "set-up wizard." Although everything checked out fine, the second call was no better than the first. Phoning Pakistan Within 25 minutes, after we'd downloaded software and figured out that the set-up wizard runs when you make your first call, Net2phone was cooking. True, it had that Azerbaijan-prison echo and delay, but our voice was heard. And that's the good news. The sound quality varied by the state of Internet traffic. One moment, the connection was so clear that a mother might even recognize her child. Next moment, the alarming silence made us suspect we'd been disconnected. To overcome delays inherent in the Internet, we learned to separate—our—words—with—pauses. With the software installed and the registration done, we wanted to time how long it took to place a call. But when we returned to Net2phone, 10 minutes of fiddling around was not enough to figure out how to place another call. It made us wonder whether Net2phone would, as it bragged, become "an effortless part of your daily communications routine." The bottom line
At the very least, our foray into Internet telephony highlighted the fiendishly simple and clever nature of a conventional telephone. Pick it up, punch 11 buttons, and within half a minute you're gabbling with almost any phone owner. Cynics might think analog phones are a system that doesn't need fixing. At any rate, before you say, "Come here, Mr. Dot-com, I want you," consider carefully whether you'll miss that sound quality and pick-up-the-receiver convenience. At this point, Internet telephones only makes sense if you enjoy technology, like doing things the hard way, make lots of international calls, and have tolerant friends and family. One more thing: It helps to know how to ask, "Can you hear me now?" in a dozen languages. David Tenenbaum is a staff writer for "The Why Files," an online science magazine, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Why Files' mission is to explore the science, math, and technology behind the headlines, and to present those topics in a clear, entertaining, and accessible manner.
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