ISPs link up to offer long-distance phone service
[[Stephen,
1%, if it were distributed among all of the ITSPs, at this rate, would still be a far cry better than what we're seeing thus far.
Speaking of which, I borrowed the following from Tim J. Flick of the NetSpeak thread.
Stephen, what do you think of such a scheme? Jeff? Are you out there? Anyone?
Regards, Frank Coluccio ]]
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Monday October 12, 5:58 PM
ISPs link up to offer long-distance phone service
By Claudia Graziano
SAN FRANCISCO (Wired) - In the race to add cut-rate, long-distance phone calling to their lists of services, Internet service providers are doing a strange thing: They're teaming up.
ISPs, along with calling-card companies and smaller telcos, are pooling their network resources to make IP telephony services more widely available to consumers in the United States and around the world.
By signing up with IP telephony clearinghouses, even mom-and-pop ISPs can offer long-distance calling over the Internet without having to build their own multimillion-dollar networks to carry voice traffic.
''Today, Internet telephony is pretty much offered on a carrier-by-carrier basis, which means which cities you can call really depends on that carrier's coverage,'' said Jim Wahl, a telecommunications analyst with the Yankee Group in Boston.
Even some of the biggest Internet telephony contenders can only offer services in select cities. One of the first telcos to offer phone-to-phone Internet calling, Qwest Communications, for example, ts equipped to handle IP telephony in just 16 U.S. cities so far.
Qwest's service, called Q.talk, costs customers 7.5 cents per minute, provided that the call originates and terminates in cities that support the service.
To get around the logistics of network coverage, many ISPs make deals with other telcos and ISPs to route calls to cities where they don't offer services. The trend has given way to a new type of company altogether, the IP telephony clearinghouse.
VIP Calling, ITXC, Delta Three, GRIC Communications, Transnexus, and ISPhone are among those companies billing themselves as IP telephony clearinghouses.
Now, AT&T is getting into the act, becoming the first telco to set up a clearinghouse shop. AT&T's Global Clearinghouse lets participating ISPs, telcos, or calling-card companies offer their customers low-cost, phone-to-phone or phone-to-PC calling in 140 cities in the United States, Asia, and Europe.
AT&T and other clearinghouses work like bulletin boards: ISPs post their long-distance rates and call-termination locations at the clearinghouse, where other ISPs choose where and with whom to route their packet-based voice calls.
''It's a clever strategy for AT&T because it gives them a way to expand their infrastructure and put their tentacles in other cities, while building up their own infrastructure in the meantime,'' said Julia Picar, an analyst with Zona Research.
AT&T began offering Internet telephony services in Japan in August 1997. But domestically, AT&T is only now starting to get into the IP telephony game.
The biggest U.S. phone company is testing its first IP service, called Connect 'N Save, in three US cities -- Boston, Atlanta, and San Francisco -- with plans to expand its service to seven cities by the end of the year.
''We are still figuring out what the best architecture is for carrying IP traffic,'' said Mike Rich, vice president of AT&T's IP services, of the company's long road ahead in moving away from total reliance on switched-circuit networks.
Like many other clearinghouses, AT&T takes care of the call routing, performance monitoring, billing, and settlement for its members.
Now claiming 20 members, AT&T uses a special algorithm to determine the most cost-efficient way to route calls, and even posts members' quality of service track records so others can choose whether or not to terminate calls in a particular area.
(Reuters/Wired) |
