Rates to connect to conventional telephones in the U.S. have been dropped to 1 cent per minute by SipPhone, the Gizmo folks. The 1 cent rate is for their CallOut service.

I’ve been using the service for several weeks with good results. At home I use it for most domestic personal and business long distance calls. I also tried it on Sunday to Germany, with good results, although with some delay/echo. Still at 2.9 cents/minute the cost can’t be beat.

I have it the software loaded on my laptop, which is kept up and running next to my desktop workstation. I put on the headset, and with a few mouse clicks, call my victim.

Ironically, I have never had a Gizmo to Gizmo (pure internet) call, only calls to to people’s telephones.

The service also works well when providing desktop support for users via logmein.