Lap talk.

I travel frequently and need to make many calls. Can I use my computer as a telephone to avoid hefty phone bills?

There's good news. Gone are the days of rooting out change for a pay phone. Also gone is waiting in kiosk lines for a phone card that can be confusing to use. And there's also no need to worry about running up massive cellular telephone bills by making international calls. The Internet has made leaps and bounds to accommodate your business calls today.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) can cut such costs and is therefore becoming more and more popular among many types of consumers. The technology moves voice over the Internet. To do this, all you need to do is install software--it's often free--from a Voice over Internet Protocol service provider such as Skype. "You just go to the site and download the software and then use a multimedia kit with the head phones and a microphone to dial and speak over the computer," says Emerson Yoshimura, Southern Cone regional manager at Linksys, the consumer and household-products division of Cisco, a technology components company. The important thing to remember is you'll need a broadband Internet connection to support the technology.

Another way to chat it up over a computer is to use an apparatus known as a softphone, a software program sold by several companies. It acts like a conventional telephone and can be used on both notebooks and desktop computers. Softphones let you make free calls over the Internet to anywhere in the world provided both parties have the same software--and access to broadband Internet technology.

It's also possible to make telephone calls to fixed lines or cellular handsets over the Internet at a reduced cost.

You'll need an account with a VoIP operator. Skype, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Net2Phone, and Cisco SoftPhone are some examples. "If you call another person who has Skype, the call will be free since the conversation doesn't leave the Internet," says Andre Moreno, assistant sales director at Unicon, a Brazilian telephone manufacturer in Cotia, in Sao Paulo state.

There other ways to make cyber calls. Unicon has developed the Baby NET, a US$85 device that hooks up to a USB computer port to move voice and data over the Internet. "It's like a conventional telephone, with the same structure and usage. On the inside it's totally different. It has its own software that allows for telephone dialogue with a softphone installed in your computer," says Moreno.

GOT A QUESTION FOR THE CONCIERGE?

SEND IT TO [e-mail]