By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
Can’t make it to France this summer?
In the digital age, the next best thing to being there might be this: a French phone number.

Primus Telecommunications on Monday will become the first major broadband phone provider to add an international flavor to anything-goes, Internet-based calling.

Customers of Primus’ Lingo Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service will be able to choose a local number in cities — including London, Paris and Tokyo — in more than a dozen countries.

The number, which costs $9.95 a month, can be used only for incoming calls as a second line to basic Lingo service. At $19.95 a month, Lingo users already get unlimited local and long-distance calls, including unlimited calls to Canada and Western Europe.

The foreign number will let overseas friends or relatives of Lingo customers call them for the price of a local call. U.S. businesses can give the number to international suppliers or partners.

«The Internet knows no geographic boundaries, and your phone service shouldn’t, either,» says Primus co-President John Melick.

Internet-based phone services are taking off by offering cut-rate prices and funky features. Subscribers, who must already have high-speed Internet service that typically costs $30 to $40 a month, plug a regular phone into a special adapter that connects to the broadband line.

Voice is turned into data packets that travel over Internet-based networks and are converted back at the other end. Since there’s no need to run wires to every home or business, providers can offer unlimited local and long-distance calling for less than $35 a month. Subscribers should jump from 500,000 to 18 million by 2008, says Frost & Sullivan analyst Jon Arnold.

The services also offer freewheeling features. Customers can get voice mail as e-mail and use their adapter, and number, anywhere there’s a phone and broadband line. They can choose from hundreds of North American area codes, because numbers are linked to an Internet address rather than a physical location.

Primus can add foreign numbers because it’s a global provider with overseas gear. A few smaller carriers offer a limited number of foreign numbers, Arnold says.