So does the abbreviation VoIP leave you dumb struck? Don't worry; even I was when I heard about it for the first time. The clouds parted when I discovered what it stands for: Voice over Internet Protocol. So does the abbreviation VoIP leave you dumb struck? Don't worry; even I was when I heard about it for the first time. The clouds parted when I discovered what it stands for: Voice over Internet Protocol.

Have you ever been left hapless at the sight of immensely long queues outside phonebooks? And that too when you need to make a call to your aunt in LA and wish her on her 65 th birthday. And, though you brave the queue for seemingly endless minutes or hours, the constantly rising bill makes you our or conversation too short to even cal it conversation. International calls are still not dirt cheap and now that the world and its brother have PC's and Internet connection, even technophobes should have enough sense to download software that enables you to make phone calls using the Internet! Yes, you read it right. Make phone calls using Internet. Just need to catch hold of an IP phone and a software like Skype and you are ready for a futuristic roller coaster experience!

Calling anywhere on Earth for three or four rupees a minute - at most, is a pretty darn good idea, and one that's catching on big time. VoIP, in layman's terms is the use of certain hardware and software that makes you call up any other person on this planet. Thereafter, you only need a good headset to have a chat and assuming of course, that you have a multimedia PC and not a BBC micro.

In a poll conducted worldwide, as many as a billion people have abandoned telephone for IP telephony. In fact, you can make a phone call to the US on dialpad coin for as little as 75 paise a minute. The internet does not know or care whether the data that's rushing through its 'routers' began as a phone conversation or a movie or a search for Pamela Anderson. As long as it is in digital packets, it can find its' way to the Internet Protocol (IP) address it's meant for. And so what is happening is more and more phone calls are getting made through Internet.

You can do it in either of the following of two ways: by going to your own Internet service provider's site (if they offer the service), or by just picking up an IP phone at a broadband Internet caf