Using your PC to make phone calls over the internet can save you a fortune, as Skype has proved. Tiscali has now joined this market with its Netphone. Like Skype, it's a free application that sits on your PC and lets you make free phone calls to other Netphone users or paid-for calls to standard telephone numbers.
Tiscali has a lot to do to tempt customers away from Skype. Netphone starts well, giving you a free 0871 number and free voicemail. This lets people dial your PC from a standard phone and, if it's turned off or you're busy, leave a message. You don't even need to use Netphone to listen to voicemail, as you can access it through your account webpage from any internet connection.
Skype offers similar services. SkypeIn gives you a telephone number and free voicemail. This costs €10 (around £7) for three months, but you can choose your dialling code, with a choice of 14 international codes. The advantage of this is that people local to that code receive cheaper calls to your Skype account. As you can pay for up to 10 numbers, this makes it a good choice for anyone who deals with a lot of people in foreign countries.
The main point of this sort of software is to make cheap phone calls. With both Skype and Netphone, you pay for calls by buying credit in advance, as you do with a pay-as-you-go mobile phone. Netphone's UK call rates (1p per minute to landlines; 12p per minute to mobiles) are very competitive. Call quality was very good when using our ADSL line and on a par with Skype's.
International rates are not so good. Calling another country in the developed world costs 3p per minute, which is around twice as expensive as Skype and more expensive than using Windows Live Messenger.
Netphone is also a lot harder to use than Skype and Messenger. If you want to call a friend who also has Netphone, there's no simple list of contacts and their online status. Instead, you have to type their email address into the call box. You can look up contacts from Outlook, which is handy, but we'd rather have the contacts display used by Skype and Messenger. Netphone also has no text chat mode, so you can't forgo a telephone conversation and will probably have to install Messenger, or one of its alternatives, if you want this option.
Netphone has other handy features, though. First, you can send and receive faxes using the provided telephone number, which is useful if you're running a business. You can also send SMS messages as if they were from your mobile, which you can do with Skype, too.
The free telephone number and voicemail are excellent, but with no text chat, expensive international calls and a clunky interface, it's disappointing. Skype is much more accomplished.
Requires Windows 98 or above, Pentium III processor, 128MB RAM, 5MB disk space, broadband internet connectionAuthor: David Ludlow
Netphone