BY JOHN MORAN
THE HARTFORD COURANT

Own a telephone, someone once said, and you give 6 billion people the right to wake you up in the middle of the night. Fortunately, most can’t be bothered.

But even that possibility highlights what a stupid and unruly brute the traditional telephone is. Someone calls, the phone rings, and you are bound to answer it — or at least be interrupted by it.

Internet telephone service — otherwise known as voice over Internet protocol, or more simply VOIP — promises to change all that, offering consumers sweeping and sophisticated control over how the phone works at an affordable price.

Consider, for example, the VOIP service from BroadVoice, a subsidiary of Convergent Networks. For as little as $9.99 a month, it offers unlimited in-state calling and long-distance service at 3.9 cents a minute — not bad for people who make most of their calls locally.

Of course, to use BroadVoice, you must supply your own high-speed Internet connection — typically either a DSL or cable Internet hookup. Still, if you spend a lot each month on long-distance calling, the savings could be considerable.

But beyond the savings, a slew of call-management features makes using BroadVoice’s VOIP service a liberating, if somewhat complicated, experience.

First you get a raft of «basic» call features, which actually seem pretty sophisticated. These include call-forwarding, call-waiting, three-way calling, last-number redial, call hold, anonymous-call rejection and more.

My favorite is the Do-Not-Disturb feature, which lets you effectively take the phone «off the hook» when you don’t want to be bothered. Incoming calls are either sent directly to voice mail or get a busy signal.

Then there are more advanced features, like those on advanced cell phones. One lets you assign a distinctive ring to calls originating from certain numbers, so you can separate special callers, such as spouse and boss, from others.

Similarly, you can arrange to have certain callers forwarded while others are sent to voice mail.

In all, BroadVoice offers 22 basic and advanced call management features. If those aren’t enough, another handful of premium features, such as customized hold music and alternative phone numbers, are available for an extra fee.

None of this would be worth much if VOIP call quality were poor. But calls placed via the BroadVoice service were almost always as good as conventional phone service — and much better than most cell phone calls.

VOIP remains a fraction of the overall telephone universe at present. But once consumers get clued into the pricing and the features available, that could change quickly.

The Hartford Courant is a Tribune Co. newspaper.