When my parents first got a home telephone we had rules about calls. Because long distance and international calls were expensive during "office hours", we only ever made them in the evening and at weekends.

Today, my own family has no such restrictions. Services such as Vonage ( www.vonage.com ), the US-based voice over internet protocol (VoIP) provider, and Skype ( www.skype.com ), the peer-to-peer internet-based communications service, have driven down the cost of fixed-line telephony over the past decade.