Vonage Holdings Corp. on Thursday announced it is slashing the price of its unlimited local and long-distance calling plan by $5 to $24.99.

Vonage, the broadband phone company, also announced plans to move all the customers subscribing to Unlimited Local -- a $24.99 unlimited local calling plan with 500 minutes of long-distance service -- to Premium Unlimited, the package that offers unlimited local and long-distance calling in Canada and the United States.

„Through some recently completed market research and trend analysis, we realized that ‘local unlimited’ really had no meaning for customers and in the world of IP and ‘buckets of minutes,’ the industry is moving away from distinguishing one kind of minute from another,“ Vonage spokesman Mitchell Slepian says.

The Edison, N.J., company now offers two residential plans: Premium Unlimited and Basic 500, a $14.99 plan offering 500 minutes in Canada and the U. S. Vonage says Premium Unlimited is its most popular calling plan.

The company says it has about 275,000 Internet phone customers.