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

To: Ray Burke who wrote (84)	11/4/1997 7:51:00 AM
From: Ray Burke	Respond to of 3178

The Global Gateway Group is rapidly deploying World Wide. gcubed.com " The Global Gateway Group (G-Cubed) is a WorldWide Consortium of Internet related businesses, services providers and telecommunications companies all sharing the common goal of delivering real time voice and fax communications from point to point using the public Internet as the main transport medium. G-Cubed is composed of member organizations that each own and operate an Internet Telephony Gateway that communicate with all other gateways in the G-Cubed Consortium Network to provide subscribers with the ability to place voice and fax calls at costs that are significantly below traditional long distance carriers." gcubed.com comments? Ray

To: Ray Burke who wrote (84)	11/4/1997 8:37:00 AM
From: Atin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

Ray, Bill, Again, the 'free lunch' only exists as long as the companies are willing to foot the bill for the lines. FTEL is paying for those lines right now, but if they enter the long distance market for real, they will have to start charging money from their customers. Not only for the Tempest, but also for the lines (after all, they have to turn a profit too). IDTC has to for its internet phonecalls, and so does AT&T for their normal long distance phonecalls. Long distance companies aren't going to sit around waiting for IP phone companies to piggyback off their networks and take away their marketshare. The long-distance companies will enter the market themselves. The cost of calling long distance is going to fall as more and more IP telephony happens, but the 'free lunch' is temporary. Enjoy it while it lasts! There is eventually going to be a two-tier internet. A 'cheap' internet with not much bandwidth, and an 'expensive' internet with a lot more bandwidth. For IP telephony to be real, most voice traffic will end up on the 'expensive' internet. I can bet that as IP telephony becomes more prevalent, the cost of the bandwidth on the 'long-distance' network is going to fall until it is similar to the cost of using that same bandwidth in an IP network. The bandwidth providers are the same as the long-distance companies and the providers are going to start using the same network for their long-distance services and the price differential is going to fall. The space for smaller entries in the IP world is at the 'edge' of the network, like in corporate intranets (connected to the internet but really their own network), call-centers hanging off the internet, etc. Or by providing value inside the central office for the big carriers (IP gateways for now, but I have no idea what's next). The network is going to be providing the bandwidth, the people making money are going to be the ones providing value-added services riding on this bandwidth. Just providing the same/similar voice services as the long-distance providers do isn't going to be a good long-term strategy. -Atin