VoIP-service bout: Skype vs. Vonage

By Felisa Yang

VoIP, or Voice over IP, has been getting a lot of press coverage and hype lately. The catchphrase seems to be "free phone calls," but is there really such a thing? After all, a full-service company, such as Vonage, charges a monthly service fee for your "free" calls. Then there are the Web-based free phone services such as Skype that initially don't charge you anything, provided you fulfill certain requirements, such as getting your friends to sign up, too. Even if you've already decided to make the jump to Internet calling, which service is right for you?

The two main categories of VoIP service are the full-service providers and the Web-based providers. We've picked Vonage to represent the former and Skype to represent the latter in this VoIP head-to-head. They differ in just about every respect, so we'll help you break it down and figure out which one is right for you. If you want to know the winner, skip ahead to the end, but the details in the middle are interesting, too.