Hello, World! It’s Internet Calling.

Internet communications company Skype Technologies has gained a worldwide following over the last couple years for one major reason: free phone calls anywhere.

Actually, they’re computer-to-computer calls, via the Internet. All that’s needed on each computer is a broadband connection, Skype’s free software, a microphone and a speaker.

The problem is that both people need to be at their machines at the time the call is made. And you can’t call anyone who is not at least somewhat computer savvy, thus eliminating much of my family.

But what if the complications were cut neatly in half -- that instead of computer-to-computer, the calls could be computer-to-phone? That way, a computer user could call any regular telephone in the world. The person getting the call wouldn’t even need to own a computer.

That’s exactly the service that Skype and another company, Vonage Holdings Corp., are offering. Skype calls it SkypeOut, and for Vonage it’s SoftPhone.

The computer-to-phone calls are not free, but they’re cheap, especially on Skype. From Los Angeles, I could call land-line telephones anywhere in Australia, France, Britain, Russia, Spain and other countries for the service’s lowest price -- about 2 cents per minute.

Contrast that with fees at long-distance telephone company MCI Inc. First, you have to buy one of its domestic long-distance plans. Then an additional $4-a-month international plan, plus per-minute charges of 7 cents to call Britain or 23 cents for Russia, to cite a couple of examples. (Making overseas calls without the international plan is ridiculously expensive: Britain is $3.55 for the first minute and $2.56 for additional minutes; Russia is $6.83, then $5.84.)

But you get what you pay for, and when you call the old-fashioned way you usually get a fantastic connection perfect for conversation.

In several SkypeOut and SoftPhone calls I placed to countries around the world, the connection quality varied greatly -- never as good as on regular phone lines but usually adequate. In only one instance was the connection unusable.

Installing the downloadable SkypeOut software was easy, both for Windows and Macintosh computers. Then by credit card I bought 10 euros’ (about $11.90 at current exchange rates) worth of calling time. (Because Skype is based in Luxembourg, it deals in euros.)

First stop, Silver Lake. I called animation writer Charlie Howell with SkypeOut as a test. “It sounds a bit like you are talking through a kazoo,� he said, “but I can tell it’s you and I can understand everything.�

Charlie sounded terrific on my end: Instead of hearing his voice in the little speaker of a telephone, I was getting it from a set of Bose computer speakers.

Next, I called David Gritten, a writer who lives in London. “You sound like you’re on a speakerphone,� he said. There were occasional dropouts that caused us to miss words here and there, but we’re all used to that from cellphones. More unsettling were delays in words coming through, making conversation a bit stilted in the beginning.

That happens sometimes because voice data, like all other types of data on the Internet, travel in minuscule packets that are reassembled upon reaching their destination, explained Maribel Lopez, a telecommunications analyst at Forrester Research.

A tiny delay in packet arrival probably won’t be noticed if the data are text or a graphic for a Web page. “But voice conversation is different,� Lopez said. “It’s very delay-sensitive. There can be pauses that are unnatural in conversation.�

After a few minutes, David and I found ourselves automatically compensating for this by pausing a second or two more than usual between each other’s speaking. Eventually, we got so wrapped up in exchanging the latest news about family members and friends, that for long stretches I forgot about the unusual nature of the call.

Next I called Shanghai. It was 2 a.m. there, but luckily Times business reporter Don Lee was still awake. The delays were a bit more pronounced than in the call to England but not bad enough to discourage conversation.

The rate for the call to China on SkypeOut was about 2.6 cents per minute. Still not bad, but some calls can be a good deal more. SkypeOut to the Philippines is 19 cents per minute, Nicaragua 21 cents, Pakistan 26 cents and Ethiopia 44 cents.

The rates are based solely on destinations. That 2.6-cent fee to call Shanghai from Los Angeles would have been the same had I been calling there from London or Moscow.

In a few countries, the fee varies based on the area. Calls to most of Mexico cost about 10 cents per minute, but to Mexico City and Monterrey it’s about 2 cents.

Computer calls to cellphones can be much more expensive. I called my friend Yasushi Zenno, a New York-based architectural historian on an extended visit to his family in Tokyo, at a rate of 2.3 cents per minute. If he had been on a cellphone, however, it would have cost about 15 cents per minute using SkypeOut.

Vonage’s SoftPhone calls seemed to be near identical in quality but generally more expensive. Firstly, its software, unlike Skype’s, is not free. The company, based in Edison, N.J., charges about $21 for it, including an activation fee.

The software is not as user-friendly, and the cost of calls is often higher: The rate for calling Britain was 3 cents per minute, China 10 cents, Russia 12 cents.

The one major flop was an attempt at calling a friend in Australia, on both SkypeOut and SoftPhone. The connections were so terrible that we could catch only a few occasional words -- not enough to make any sense of the conversation.

If you must have an absolutely clear, consistent connection, nothing beats picking up an ordinary telephone.

But I probably would have never talked to my friends David, Don or Yasushi this month if not for SkypeOut.

It’s not trouble-free, but what’s a little trouble if it strengthens friendships?

David Colker can be reached via e-mail at technopolis@ latimes.com.