I've come to this conclusion after testing DigitalVoice, a VoIP service from an Edison, N.J., upstart called Vonage (VON-edge). Vonage exploits broadband cable or DSL Internet services to route calls over the Net made with an off-the-shelf telephone. Callers need not dial extra digits.

Setup was a cinch. I took an AT&T cordless telephone and connected it via the usual "RJ-11" phone cord to a small black box made by Vonage's partner, Cisco Systems. In turn, I ran an Ethernet cable from the Cisco box, supplied by Vonage as part of the service, to my own 3Com router that was hooked up to my cable modem.

In techie terms, you'll need a broadband connection with upstream speeds of at least 90 kbps; you can run speed tests at the Vonage site before you buy. Of course, broadband is a key reason the quality is so much better than when I evaluated VoIP the last time using a dial-up modem. More jargon: Vonage also relies on an emerging technological standard called SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol.