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Technology Stocks : Voice-on-the-net (VON), VoIP, Internet (IP) Telephony -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Giora Zeevy who wrote (26)	10/28/1997 11:05:00 PM
From: Ray Dopkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

Giora, went to the FTEL Web site, but was unable to locate the area to signup for the card. Any ideas? thanks...

To: Giora Zeevy who wrote (26)	10/29/1997 2:53:00 AM
From: taLuis	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3178

I'm interested in this FTEL product. I live in Los Angeles and my wife calls her relatives in Chile (South America) all the time. It costs me anywhere from $50 to $100 a month in long distance phone bills. I'd like to use a product like this to save money. Is it possible? Question: Does it require the other party on the call to be on the Internet as well? Luis

To: Giora Zeevy who wrote (26)	10/29/1997 9:40:00 AM
From: Atin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3178

Hi Giara, I definitely want to try the FTel calling card. I am going to get it as soon as I have a moment to research this stuff. But in reality I don't really care about the quality of the phone-call, all the other competitors will be able to have the same sort of quality (IDTC not included, I don't know what they are doing but I have friends who have thrown away their cards because of the bad quality) since the quality depends on the bandwidth available on the network and the vocoders used. FTel/FNet isn't going to be able to compete head-on with the big telephone companies like MCI/Worldcom (if that happens) if these companies start to get into IP Telephony. What FTEL has going for it is the hardware underneath. This seems to be competitive and of high quality and maybe FTEL will be able to sell to the companies like MCI that are going to build the phone to phone system on top of it. But remember that MCI does have partnerships with Netspeak and others and Lucent has partnerships with NMSS and others. It isn't going to be easy for FTEL, but these things never are. I do not think of the FTEL/Fnet calling card as anything but a proof of concept to prove to the MCI's, AT&T's etc of the world that their product works and works well. I know that Frank (FTEL CEO) thinks that they're going to be a phone company. I wish him the best, but I am a little sceptical about that particular plan. The little company is choosing battles it might not be big enough to win. The battles it can fight are in the PBX arena, the corporate intranet arena, and in the partnership arena where it sells to bigger companies who develop the software on top. This is what I think they will target eventually and that's when the company will become a strong buy for me. Right now it is a good speculative buy for me. Good luck and good investing, -Atin