07:27 Barron's cover story highlights VOIP
Barron's highlights a new threat to US telecom's - the VOIP. Michael Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has heralded it as promising "the most important shift in the entire history of modern communications since the invention of the telephone." That shift will unleash powerful competition, create important players and offer huge opportunities for some co's that hadn't been in the picture, particularly cable-TV operators. And it is already under way. According to the article, there are at least five distinct markets for VOIP-based services. The largest, if least ballyhooed, is carrying long-distance and international calls. It is often cheaper for long-distance co's to transport calls via IP than by circuit-switched networks. MCI, AT&T, Level 3 and other co's carry calls this way. There also is a growing market in corporate VOIP networks. Cisco, Nortel and Avaya this year should sell about $2 bln in IP-based PBX, or public branch exchange, equipment that lets co's move voice calls over their own data networks, saving considerable sums on telecom bills while providing a variety of new features. Skype dominates the PC-to-PC category. Thanks to a huge spate of publicity, more than 12 mln people have downloaded the free Skype software; thousands use it to make free calls to other Skype users. And Skype plans to sell a version for Internet-enabled hand-held devices. VoiceGlo, a unit of TheGlobe.com offers a Web-based service that connects with the public network for as little as $3.99 a month, plus a per-minute charge. Also, consumers can use instant-messaging software such as Yahoo! Messenger, Microsoft's MSN Messenger and ICQ, to have a voice "chat" from PC to PC. They also can use those services to make calls from a PC to any phone, via service providers like Net2Phone and DeltaThree. Other stocks mentioned positively in article include Time Warner, Cox Communications, Comcast and Qwest Communications. |
