The previously announced Internet telephony capabilities of Yahoo Messenger are set to be activated today after the company announced them three months ago. Yahoo has implemented a staggered roll out of the feature since December for German, French, Spanish, Italian and Singaporean users. The upgrade is dubbed Yahoo Messenger with Voice and lets users dial out from the IM interface to traditional mobile phones. Users are also able to rent one or more phone numbers from Yahoo to receive phone calls through the service for $2.99 a month or $29.90 a year (initially, only U.S., U.K. and French numbers will be available). Calls made to phone numbers in the U.S. and 30 of the heavier trafficked companies will cost 2 cents a minute or less, while calls made to the other 150 countries serviced will vary by region.
For more on Yahoo's new VoIP feature:
- see this article from PCWorld