Internet portal Lycos, owned by Spain's Telefonica, is launching a Windows-based program that provides free calls to phones when the user signs up for promotional offers for credit cards or Netflix's DVD service. The software also shows banner ads.

Users who don't sign up for offers will pay 1 cent a minute for domestic calls when they exhaust their initial 100 free minutes.

The Lycos Phone application also offers movie previews, PC-to-PC video calling and text messaging.

Meanwhile, another new service seeks to simplify Internet calling, which works by breaking voice calls into data packets just like e-mail, sending them over the Internet and reassembling them into sound at the recipient's end.

With Austria-based Jajah, users go to the company's Web site and enter two phone numbers ? their own and the number to call. Jajah rings the caller's number, and after the user picks up, it dials the other number. If the call is answered, Jajah connects the two lines.

There's no need to install software or get a microphone for the computer, and it's not restricted to Windows. The call goes from phone to phone, with Jajah's site and the Internet as the intermediary.

Domestic U.S. calls cost about 1.7 cents a minute. A U.S.-France call costs 1.9 cents.