MCI & Microsoft Strike A Deal

Microsoft makes a deal with MCI which offers its users to make calls from their PC's to land lines at a lowered price. Microsoft seems to be starting the Internet phone marathon an hour behind its competition. Skype has had plenty of time (two years) to establish and pretty much dominate the Internet phone market.

Microsoft and MCI will offer first version to a limited number of users while releasing it to more and more users over time. MCI Web Calling for Windows Live Call will be launched this week in the United States. It will work with Microsoft's next version of its instant-messaging program. The bad part is that the program itself will be limited to make only outbound calls from PCs to regular phones. This lets companies with a head start continue to rack up customers while Microsoft joins the race.

This latest push doesn't come as a surprise for those following the Redmond, WA software company. They've been making some big changes lately with their decision to reform, command and re-conquer the potential markets that have slipped through their ever growing hands.

Brian Arbogast, an MSN corporate vice president said, 'We're not at all a phone company, and we have no intentions of being a phone company…We've built a model where we can leverage all of our technological investments and marry them with the investments, the competencies and the expertise of a phone company such as MCI."

Arbogast said the decision to partner with a telecom company could give Microsoft an important ally as it moves further into the online voice market.