The huge difference between what it costs to make Net contact with the far side of the world and what it costs to talk to someone there has given rise to a series of attempts to make telephone-type calls on the Net. For the most part, these were limited to hobbyist or family chat by poor sound quality, the difficulty of placing a call and the need for both parties to have computers running the same software. Eireann (TE) accused them of infringing its monopoly. The latter concern ended with the deregulation of telecommunications late last year and
Ireland OnLine is addressing such problems with a new service that overcomes most disadvantages of Internet telephony while offering savings over Telecom Eireann rates. It succeeds for the most part. Users pay £12.10 for 60 minutes of calls per month (or £30.25 for 180 minutes) to the major destinations for calls from Ireland, including Europe, the US and Australia. This includes special software and a handset to connect to their computer. Their calls are routed over a private, Internet-style network for the bulk of the journey, and back into the telephone system at the far end. The caller can save money and the call arrives at an ordinary telephone at the called end. The downside is reduced line quality, despite the use of Networks Telephony's private network. On our test, this quality was helped by having an ISDN connection to IOL, but hindered by placing the call to a destination in Ireland - not something the service is designed for. On this trial, the quality was below a normal international call, but much better than a personal web-phone connection. It would be fine for collaboration within a company, or family chat, but probably wouldn't suit someone making a first call to a potentially important business contact.