Intel hardwires free and easy web calls

Intel is to hardwire internet telephony directly into processors and by-pass traditional dial-up services by allowing calls to be made by standard phones.

The move will give Intel continuing telephony revenues from processor sales thanks to £15m (£7.5m) investment, announced two weeks ago, in web telephony company Jajah.

Jajah differs from services such as Skype in that it does not require special handsets and uses standard phone numbers. In the basic PC version you simply enter a phone number and Jajah rings it – and also calls your own number, completing a connection when both ends are answered.

National and international landline calls between registered users are free and other calls are cut-rate. You can also now use Jajah from a web-enabled mobile phone.

Under the new Intel system, to be introduced next year, your phone or hands-free DECT base station will plug into your PC instead of a phone jack and you will simply dial the number as usual.

The processor will do the rest whether or not your PC is switched on – the latest designs allow parts of the CPU to be shut down selectively.

"You won't need your phone line any more," said Daniel Mattes, co-founder and executive chairman of Jajah. It is so simple that anyone can use it.

"Two to three hundred million machines a year will be fitted with the system from 2008. With three to four years every PC will have it."

Jajah makes its money from cut-rate calls and value-added services. It recently did a deal with a big US online dating agency, which uses the system to put people into phone contact without revealing their phone numbers.

Mattes claimed that 70 per cent of Jajah callers use the paid-for services as well as free calls, compared with one per cent of Skype users.