While email is a great technology, it is messaging technology that truly leverages the power of the Internet. Chatting has become very common means of communication. Today, more than ever, people use chat clients to connect with their colleagues, friends, and relatives. Chat clients allow users to communicate with others through text messages, and digital emotions among other things. But one thing that was missing from chat clients was the ability to talk to others while typing text messages. While it is useful to be able to type messages to other users, the need for vocal communication was not completely satisfied by chat clients. This created the need for VoIP Internet phone services.

Companies gradually came to realize that many chatters were looking for voice chat features in their chat clients. At first, it was difficult and expensive for chat service providers to integrate voice chat features into their chat clients. But that all changed when VoIP Internet phone services came around. VoIP, which makes use of the Internet to move voice packets over the networks, allows companies to provide voice chat service for their customers for much lower prices. Integrating VoIP Internet phone services into IM clients not only provides a huge saving in costs for providers and users, it also saves users a lot of time and increases their productivity.

Large companies such as eBay and Google have witnessed VoIPs potential, and they have integrated VoIP into their chat clients. Microsoft was playing catch up in this market, but they have also decided to include VoIP service with their latest version of Windows Messenger Live product.

The challenge for users of both chat software and online VoIP Internet phone technology remains that both parties must be at their computers to utilize this service. However, companies, such as Pingo, have now been able to integrate VoIP Internet phone technology and its low cost structure into prepaid calling programs. While these products are not free, as with chat software, they are extremely inexpensive. With Pingo, an American can call China for just 1.8 cents per minute. This is much less than they used to pay to write that letter, and they can now connect instantaneously, even from their mobile phone for this rate! This works simply because companies such as Pingo have developed the technology to inexpensively connect local phone calls to the Internet, route the calls via VoIP, and terminate them again with a local phone carrier at the point of termination.

So now, with prepaid services such as Pingo, you can take advantage of the low cost of VoIP Internet phone connection, from your land or mobile phones, to call international destinations for just pennies per minute.