There's no denying the appeal of broadband internet access and yet for a smart country Australia has been falling way behind our international counterparts.

We've traversed the acronym laden landscape of VoIP for you, and present you with the PC Authority guide to VoIP: what it is, what kinds of services you can find, what savings you can expect to make and how it is that you can go about setting up VoIP for yourself at home.

Type: VoIP service with IP phoneWeb: www.broadbandphone.com.auPrice: $199 plus monthly charges

Part 1 of our VoIP product and services roundup includes: MyNetFone, Broadbandphone, Skype, Firefly, BBP Global and Chat-Cord.

Type: ATA/RouterPrice: TBASupplier: TBA

Type: ATA/RouterPrice: TBASupplier: TBA

Type: Type: Soft phoneWeb: www.freshtel.net

Part 2 of our VoIP products and services roundup includes: MailVoice, LetsChat, Netgear TA612V, Netcomm V40 and Octtel gateway.

Belkin is not normally a name you'd associate with leading edge networking products, but in the case of the Pre-N range they've really grabbed the bull by the horns and delivered some excellent gear. The Pre-N networking range is based on the 802.11g standard so it's backward compatible with 11b, but like some other 'turbo' networking gear the Pre-N stuff also offers well over the 802.11g 54Mbps data throughput with 108Mbps.