CALLERS USE INTERNET LIKE A PHONE SERVICE.

Byline: John H. Cushman The New York Times

Jeffrey Levine, a medical student in Guadalajara, Mexico, and Mike Dehn, a wildlife biologist in Whitehorse, Yukon, can both make long-distance calls to the four corners of the world over the Internet, at little expense, using their computers instead of the telephone.

But because they use incompatible software to bypass the conventional long-distance phone companies, they cannot talk to each other.

Such is the state of talking over the Internet, an evolving niche in the world of telecommunications that is attracting a growing band of enthusiasts.

Talking over the Internet is not perfect. The quality of the sound can be poor and it can be complicated to set up your computer for voice communications. It has some of the drawbacks of ham radio, but some of the advantages of high-tech teleconferencing.

But the very fact that the technology is available - and increasingly popular and powerful - is making the long-distance phone companies nervous.

After all, once a computer user has paid for an Internet connection, usually at a modest monthly fee, and purchased inexpensive software and perhaps a microphone or speakers, there is no additional cost per minute or per mile for talking to someone halfway around the world.

In March, the America's Carriers Telecommunication Association asked the Federal Communications Commission asking it to regulate the providers of Internet voice-communications software as if they were telephone companies.

The telephone companies asked the agency ``to order the respondents to immediately stop their unauthorized provisioning of telecommunications services.''

The technology's enthusiasts, who call it Internet telephony, are fighting back. One of them, Jeff Pulver of Garden City, N.Y, set up the Voice On Net Coalition (http://www.von.org) to coordinate the defense of their avocation.

Pulver, a computer network administrator on Wall Street, drifted into the Internet from ham radio. In his home, he has installed high-speed equipment that is far beyond an ordinary user's needs, and while still a hobbyist, he has become a hub for information and services related to Internet voice communications.

``For the past year and a half, since Internet telephony hit me, I haven't picked up a ham radio microphone,'' he said. ``This stuff really works. No doubt there are going to be tremendous applications in business.''

Aside from the potential regulatory hurdles, he said, the software suppliers will have to make good on recent promises to adopt standard protocols so that their customers can easily talk to each other using different software.

``This may be the year that the cyberspace Tower of Babel disappears and instead we see cooperation,'' he said, citing an agreement in March among leading hardware and software suppliers to adopt an open, standard technology.

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