Sorry to hear you punched out Doc. AOL is great and will make all of us longs much $$ over the years. Found this a few minutes ago, hot off the press.
Tuesday July 20 11:24 AM ET
ICQ, Net2phone Agree To Offer Online Phone Service
DULLES, Va. (Reuters) - America Online Inc.'s (NYSE:AOL - news) fast-growing ICQ chat service said Monday its 38 million users will be able to make phone calls to each other over their personal computers through a four-year deal with Web telephony provider Net2phone.
Software allowing voice communications over the Internet has been available for years, but ICQ said its deal provides the first opportunity to integrate and standardize a single service compatible across tens of millions of users.
Initial service between two users talking through microphones connected to their personal computers will be free. AOL spokeswoman Wendy Goldberg said other rates, yet to be disclosed, would be competitive with long distance carriers.
Net2phone and ICQ will offer ICQ branded telephone calling cards in the fall, with full services available early next year, Goldberg said. Financial terms of the multimillion-dollar deal were not disclosed.
''We do think it will be cost effective,'' Goldberg said, adding that undercutting long-distance carriers was not the goal. ''This is to give ICQ members another fun way to communicate,'' she said.
ICQ -- not an acronym but pronounced ''I Seek You'' -- has tripled the number of its users since AOL bought it last year. At that time, ICQ had registered 12.8 million users. |
