02 August 2007

The price of home phone service has dropped 30 percent since 1999.
Surely, say the analysts, that trend line will eventually plummet all
the way to zero. Surely, thanks to the Internet's ability to carry your
voice, landline phone calls will soon be free.

Already,
dozens of calling services promise to slash your residential phone bill
by exploiting the Internet. And yet nobody has yet delivered the holy
grail: free calling, to any phone number, from your regular telephone.
There's always a catch.

For example, programs like Skype
offer unlimited free calls — but not from your phone. You and your
conversation partner have to sit at your computers wearing headsets,
like nerds.