🚀 go-pugleaf

Barry, it's so much more fun (for some) to jump on a soap box and
pontificate at the 100,000 foot level instead of dealing with the
nitty-gritty of the real world.  Reality bites.  :-)

There are a couple of companies that are carrying/plan to carry
long-distance voice traffic over IP backbones (note: NOT necessarily
"over the Internet" -- using private IP backbones allows for more
consistent quality of service) and offer service at significant
discounts over the traditional interexchange carriers.  Key players
include:

ICG Communications, Inc.
http://www.icgcomm.com/news/releases/1998/3-11.htm which has announced
long-distance services at 5.9 cents/min for calls originating and
terminating on their IP network, and 7.8 cents/min for calls originating
on their IP net but terminating elsewhere (i.e. on the PSTN).  They
bought Netcom last year.

ITXC Corporation http://www.itxc.com/ , run by an ex-AT&T guy and
partially funded by the Death Star.  They offer service both on a retail
and wholesale (to ISPs) level to allow for PSTN termination of
IP-originated calls.

VocalTec http://www.vocaltec.com/ , a key provider of IP telephony
technology.

See the VON (Voice Over Internet) Coalition's page http://www.von.org/
for additional background.

This sort of thing scares the pants out of a lot of governments/PTTs
around the world, who depend on outrageously high international
direct-dial tariffs for their revenues.

I personally am surprised at the ineffective marketing that's been done
to date on the fax-over-IP front.  Fax over IP ought to be a no-brainer,
particularly for international traffic, but I don't have the sense that
it's catching on very fast.

An article reported in yesterday's Wall Street Journal summarized FCC
Chairman Kunnard's remarks to the USTA, to whom he said that advanced
data networks (e.g. networks running under IP) could be free of retail
regulation under the right circumstances.  RBOCs operating such
networks, for example, could carry interLATA traffic without handing it
off to an interexchange carrier.

In other words, IP could be a "back-door" approach to having the RBOCs
participate in the long-distance market.

All of this becomes very interesting, indeed.

Pete

______________________________________________________________________
Peter J. Farmer                    E-mail: pfarmer@strategies-u.com
Strategies Unlimited               Voice:  +1 650 941 3438
201 San Antonio Circle, Suite 205  Fax:    +1 650 941 5120
Mountain View, CA 94040            WWW:    http://www.strategies-u.com




>-----Original Message-----
>From: Barry Shein [mailto:bzs@world.std.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 1998 12:27 PM
>...
>The implication would seem to be that perhaps traditional
>long-distance carriers (voice) are either considering or currently
>trunking some of their voice calls via (eg) interstate IP paths and
>thus claiming they're not really long-distance calls at all and
>shouldn't be subject to certain tariffs and taxes, even though the two
>callers are just using POTS in the usual way (picking up the phone and
>dialing, or punching.)
>
>Is this true? Is this actually going on or about to go on in any big
>way?