Yahoo makes its telecom play

Called Phone Out and Phone In, the new VoIP services are part of Yahoo Messenger with Voice.

The Phone Out service will enable users to make calls from a PC to traditional or mobile phones in more than 180 countries. Calls will cost $0.01 per minute to the U.S. and less than $0.02 per minute to more than 30 international countries, including Argentina, Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea. Pre-paid credit plans will be available in $10 and $25 increments.

The Phone In service will enable users to receive calls on a PC from traditional or mobile phones for $2.99 a month or $29.90 a year. Users can have multiple phone numbers to use when they travel. They also can choose a phone number in a different country so that people who call them from that area will be charged only for a local phone call.

A new Contact Search Bar will allow users to easily find their contacts and communicate with them through instant text message, voice calling, e-mail or mobile text message. An Open Talk feature will maintain a constant direct connection so with the click of an icon, people can instantly start PC-to-PC voice conversations.

The beta version of the new services will launch simultaneously in seven localized versions within countries including the United States, Spain, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore and Germany, but a Yahoo representative could not say when.

Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger offer free PC-to-PC calling and the ability to communicate with each others' networks. Yahoo also offers PC-to-PC video calling, which eBay's Skype unveiled last week.

Sony launched a free VoIP service last month with video calling and America Online launched PC-to-phone capabilities in October. Google launched its PC-to-PC call-enabled Google Talk instant messenger program in August.