Yahoo! raises its Voice with new VoIP services

Yahoo! said on Wednesday it will offer two new fee-based voice over IP (VoIP) services so customers can make voice calls from a PC to a telephone and receive phone calls on a PC.

Called Phone Out and Phone In, the new VoIP services are part of Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.

The Phone Out service will enable users to make calls from a PC to traditional or mobile phones in more than 180 countries. Calls will cost $0.01 per minute to the US and less than $0.02 per minute to more than 30 international countries, including Argentina, Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea. Pre-paid credit plans will be available in $10 and $25 increments.

The Phone In service will enable users to receive calls on a PC from traditional or mobile phones for $2.99 per month or $29.90 per year. Users can have multiple phone numbers to use when they travel. They can also choose a phone number in a different country so people who call them from that area will only be charged for a local phone call.

A new Contact Search Bar will allow users to easily find their contacts and communicate with them through instant text message, voice calling, email or mobile text message. An Open Talk feature will maintain a constant direct connection so with the click of an icon, people can instantly start PC-to-PC voice conversations.

The beta version of the new services will launch simultaneously in seven localised versions within countries including Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, Spain and the US but a Yahoo! representative could not say when.

Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger offer free PC-to-PC calling and the ability to communicate with each others' networks. Yahoo! also offers PC-to-PC video calling, which eBay's Skype unveiled last week.

Sony launched a free VoIP service last month with video calling and AOL launched PC-to-phone capabilities in October. Google launched its PC-to-PC call-enabled Google Talk instant messenger program in August.

Elinor Mills writes for CNET News.com