The latest version of Yahoo Messenger - the text, voice and video communications application to be released in the coming days - will allow computer users to make and receive calls from phones at rates that undercut those of rival Skype (owned by eBay) and traditional phone companies, reports Reuters. Yahoo's "Phone Out" will offer low per-minute charges for calls from computers to phones, and its "Phone In" will be a low-cost subscription service for phone callers who call computer users.

Yahoo will charge one cent per minute to Yahoo Messenger users who call the U.S. from throughout the world - about 180 countries - and two cents a minute to call countries (about 30 thus far) other than the U.S. Details will be available soon at http://voice.yahoo.com/.

Yahoo calls to the U.S. are half the price of Skype's 2.1 cents per minute, but Skype's rate applies to nearly 30 countries, making it comparable to Yahoo's.