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

To: Crash who wrote (547)	5/15/1998 8:52:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 3178

Crash, >>What company or regulatory body will function as the clearing house for financial settlement in the IP telephony world?<< I assume that you mean when an international regulatory agency for VoIP/VON is created? I personally don't see this in the cards at present on the international side, although I do see some governments melding this traffic into the mainstream of their normal PTT telephone flows. Of course, there are already those countries who are exploiting VoIP and taking it into the fold already, since they do not permit free enterprise in the communications sector to flourish in the first place. Some of the more oppressive countries are already doing this by virtue of their direct state-ownership interests. Some of these regions are particularly precarious, where it is a criminal offense to operate a VoIP "base station" of operations without the government's oversight, knowledge, and approval, or not at all, in many instances. Currently there are international consortia, cooperatives and a few companies whose sole purpose is to act as middleman, settlement agent, etc., but from the standpoint of state-sanctioned or internationally approved standards for business behavior, fiduciary guidelines and conduct, clearing rules may not be effective or even approachable for a long time to come. In many ways it's like the wild west. Unless such rules and guidelines are created and formalized directly from the carriers themselves (read: if state governments attempt to dictate the terms they will not succeed for very long, judging from the way the 'net is evolving). The door is wide open for both legitimate as well as crooked operators (and subscribers). There have been many stories about how some difficult-to-track-down operators in a far-off and foreign land have falsely represented to their partners their charges to their own subscribers in the settlement formulae, or who just flat out don't pay up, as they switch distant-end partners from one period of time to the next. This is why the consortia like Planet and GRIC are poised to make their mark, although I do not know what their success rates have been in numerical terms, to date. It isn't all this one sided, of course, and the other side of the coin deserves its time too. There are some very professionally defined relationships, as well, especially where the individual players have elected to join into a cooperative that defines divisions of revenues, technology sharing, standards compliance among their platforms, and a uniform appearance to subscribers on billing issues. I think that Jeff Pulver's forum pulver.com has some interesting transcripts from recent conferences that speak to this topic. If not, email their webmaster for it, or PM to me your email address. Regards, Frank Coluccio