Microsoft to break into Internet telephony

Microsoft intends to break into the increasingly contested Internet telephony market in cooperation with phone company MCI, company officials announced in Redmond in the U.S. state of Washington.

MCI Web Calling for Windows Live Call will soon be tested as part of Windows Live Messenger in the United States, France, Germany, Spain and Britain.

Access to the service will be limited initially.

On registration, clients will be able to phone free of charge for one hour using the network, according to information released by Microsoft.

When the hour is up, clients will be charged 2.23 cents per minute for calls between the U.S., Canada and certain European countries.

Links between more than 220 countries are being set up, with prices being published during the course of the year.

Towards the end of last year, Yahoo! launched its own Internet telephony program with a highly competitive price of 1.21 euro cents (1.43 cents).

Both companies are relative latecomers to the market, which is currently dominated by Skype, AOL and Vonage.

Skype and others have meanwhile introduced Internet video telephony and are also linking up calls from the fixed line networks to PCs. The latter will not initially be possible with the Microsoft network.