Dixons Stores Group’s Freetalk is the latest entrant to the overhyped market for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). For £80, it promises “free unlimited calls to UK land lines for a year” simply by adding a small box to your broadband internet connection. This is not really new. Gossiptel(www.gossiptel.com) and Vonage(www.vonage.co.uk) have been offering similar services for a while. Are they too good to be true? You bet.

There are a few facts that Dixons glosses over in the publicity for its “revolutionary” service. First, services such as Freetalk require that you plug in a phone handset that will set you back about £20, or more for a posh cordless digital model. To make and receive calls without the computer being turned on, you also need a broadband router. The older USB modems that many broadband customers still use to connect to the internet will permit calls only when your computer is on, which means you either have to be noncontactable for large parts of the day, or keep your machine on and run up an electricity bill the size of Twickenham’s. So, let’s add another £25 or so for a broadband router.

How good is Freetalk? Well, it took a couple of hours of diligent help from its tech-support team (10p a minute makes that £12), and five days of trial-and-error to make my connection work. Finally, after a fiddle with the firewall, it sprang to life. Remember, these new services need complicated bits of computing kit, not simply a phone you plug into the wall.

My mum could easily be classed as a phone expert, with more than 50 years’ experience, so I rang her and the first thing she said was: “Are you not home yet? The line is very faint.” She thought I was on my mobile.

From past experience, I know that you can often hear a faint echo of your own voice. In addition, with Freetalk, the sound grew fainter last week once people started coming home from work and fired up their broadband. That said, these non-computer-based services are a big step forward from the ropey sound on the genuinely free computer-to-computer VoIP services, such as Skype (www.skype.com) and Google Talk (www.google.com/talk), which need computer headsets instead of phones and suffer from a constant “I’m going through a tunnel” sound. A decent headset helps, but conversation can feel like those satellite-link interviews where reporters are constantly talking across one another because of the lag.

The biggest problem with Freetalk, however, is that even with the free calls, it probably won’t save you money; in fact, it could cost more. You must always pay phone-line rental to BT, whichever ISP supplies your broadband service, because BT refuses to sell broadband-only lines. So that’s £10 a month lining BT’s pockets, even if you don’t use its phone service.

In addition, the free calls apply only to UK land lines, yet most of us have mobile phones, which throw in more free minutes to land lines than many people ever consume. Calls to mobiles and abroad still have to be paid for, at rates that are barely lower than those offered by new land line-based services such as Carphone Warehouse’s Talk Talk (www.talktalk.co.uk).

So, all in all, Freetalk costs £80 for the adaptor box, potentially another £45 for a new phone and router and, in my case, £12 for support calls. Then, after a year, a £6.99 monthly charge kicks in. That’s more than £200 in the first two years, without any call charges whatsoever.

Freetalk? Don’t make me laugh.

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