By Robert X. Cringely, Inc Magazine

Bad news for your phone company: Good, cheap Internet phone service is finally here.

The only thing I have in common with Howard Stern (other than the fact that we are both mammals) is that we both use Internet telephone service from a company called Vonage. The Vonage service allows Howard and me to make, for $39.99 per month, unlimited phone calls anywhere in the U.S. and Canada and darned cheap phone calls to anywhere else in the world. It uses real phones and real phone numbers and is just like the service you're used to, except that calls are routed over the Internet rather than over a telephone company's network. Vonage is aimed at people with broadband Internet connections (primarily DSL or a cable modem) and uses a technology called voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). And it could kill your phone company.

Here is what I get for my $39.99. I get a little box from Cisco Systems that plugs into the Ethernet switch on my home network, and into that I plug a telephone. I use Vonage as line three on my four-line Panasonic wireless phone system, so line three (the free one) is available on all six extension phones. If that sounds like a typical small-business setup, then you must have visited my house. The Vonage line replaces my old office phone line, saving me more on my SBC bill than I pay Vonage and making the service effectively free. (Lines one and two are for regular phone lines--a hedge.)

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