The short answer is that they plan to do all of the above: voice-mail, fax, voice, video, and multimedia, all over IP networks, using leased lines, intranets, and public access lines. That is a lot to swallow all at once, so they are starting with the lowest apples on the tree, which is international VoIP traffic.
As far as quality, there is some degradation but you have to compare that with the cost. International calls are very costly, so callers have more of an incentive to accept a slight degradation in quality for a large drop in cost. To minimize the problems here, Digitcom is using the latest in state-of-the-art, NMSS's gateways that support open standards, as stated in their news release. They also use up to 43:1 voice compression to allow real-time transmission of substantial amounts of digitized voice data.
What Digitcom is doing mirrors what the big telcos are not doing, and vice versa, to avoid direct competition. Digitcom is not entering the U.S market directly, as the competition is intense and the big telcos have too much of an advantage. They are also not in competition with those that are selling equipment. What they are doing, instead, is entering into partnerships with regional telcos in overseas markets, and with equipment suppliers such as NMSS and NORTEL.
The money in the early part of this race is in international cheap minutes. That is what Digitcom is exploiting. As revenues begin to flow, they plan to develop the rest. If and when they get large enough to be a significant factor, I expect there will be a lot of interest in them as a takeover target, but that is just a guess. |
