By a system known as Voice over IP you can use your internet connected computer as a phone. Calls to other users of the same VoIP system are usually free and calls to any normal phone are usually a fraction of the price of your landline.

For a good if teccie overview of VoIP take a look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_IP

www.voipuser.org is an active discussion forum for all things VoIP

Skype is probably the most popular VoIP programme and has been downloaded over 100 million times. At any given time there are usually about 2 million subscricers connected and it probably gives you the highes chance of finding people you already know online.

It provides you with VoIP on your windows, Mac OSX, Linux or PocketPC computer. Put simply it means you can use your computer (with microphone and speakers or headphones of course) as a telephone. Calls to other Skype users are free or calls to any telephone in the world can be made for a small fee (e.g. about 1p a minute to any landline in the UK, and the same price for most of Europe, North America and East Asia). another small fee gets you a landline number for your computer and voicemail. Almost a full replacement for your landline for a far lower line rental a year. (Just make sure you have a way of making 999 calls before you cut the wire!)

And, yes, it does work, quality over my w3z commection is never worse than a good mobile phone connection

www.skype.com

Put 'Skype' in the search box of any of the big IT hardware suppliers and you will get a big list of suitable equipment to connect to your computer ranging from headphones and microphones to telephone style handsets. Headsets made by Plantronics often come with free conection time to ordinary phone numbers via skype.

Other systems are out there, they work just as well as Skype and many can provide features Skype can't. Sytems using the sip protocol don't even need a PC to be switched on. A suitable IP phone can just be connected to your home network or a small adaptor box will let you plug your existing phone into your network.

W3Z, our wifi broadband supplier, offer their own solution called Telsip:

www.w3z.co.uk/voip.php

Sipgate is another option and my favorite at the moment. They will gve you a free phone number in any exchange you like (so I have an 01629) and you can use either software on your PC or IP phones connected to your network to access it:

www.sipgate.co.uk/user/index.php

Calls are much cheaper than normal landlines and just as good quality.

Sipgate will route emergency calls to the 999 services but just take note VOIP will not work if your power or internet connection fails