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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raj who wrote (51624)	8/5/1998 3:47:00 AM
From: bucky89	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 61433

Raj, In response to your comments: Universal access fees are paid by IXCs to the points of origination and termination of calls... You can bypass it if lets say a SOHO connects its intranet directly into a QWEST backbone I believe your last statement is consistent with QWEST's business model. They intend to avoid UAF's. Either case, the cost efficiency over current circuit switches is around an order magnitude without consideration of access charges. Would you switch providers if a different provider offered you a $.02/minute discount from your current provider? Yes, you are right that there is an order of magnitude even without UAF's, but you're now talking the difference of say between $.04 and $.02 per minute. Yes, you save 50%, but is it worth it??? For some, perhaps it is, but for the profitable corporate customers who are risk intolerant, I believe they would be slow to switch until the rest of the world does. By that time if it ever comes, QWEST will cease to be a novelty, as all carriers will be doing VoIP. I believe packetized voice will take off overseas where telecom costs are non-competitive with the prices in the US. The Internet has no borders, and it will be impossible for governments to regulate. There will be enormous arbitrage opportunities which will cause earthshaking changes in the heavily-regulated/non-competitive telecom market found in many foreign countries. I believe that is where VoIP will make its biggest impact. bucky89