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To: djane who wrote (16031)	8/14/1998 6:32:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

Sprint starts gateway-based VOIP market trial americasnetwork.com August 13, 1998 David Kopf Sprint has started a market trial of its Callternatives service, a phone-to-phone Internet telephony offering that carries voice traffic on the carrier's Internet protocol (IP) backbone, instead of the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Customers in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle will be able to try the service for a limited time, and will be able to call throughout the United States, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as India, Japan, Mexico City, South Korea and Taiwan. "The market trial will test many issues, including technology, market acceptance and price," says Terri Morrow, vice president of emerging technologies in Sprint's Consumer Services Group. "Before we leap into offering an IP-based telephony service, we want to make sure it is as reliable, as robust and easy to use as possible. ... The quality of voice over IP [VOIP] has improved to the point where we feel comfortable offering it to our customers." Sprint will pre-bill Callternatives customers' credit card accounts for blocks of service in $10 and $25 increments. The service will take the gateway approach to VOIP. To use Callternatives, customers dial local numbers to reach gateways on the edge of Sprint's IP network, which will ask them, through an interactive voice response (IVR) interface, for their PINs and the numbers they wish to reach. The gateways then connect to the gateways closest to recipients' numbers, which will outdial to the recipients. The calls are then established, with the IP backbone serving as the long-distance network. Sprint will use the market trial to evaluate providing commercial VOIP service. Sprint is also evaluating fax and enhanced services, such as unified messaging, for its IP network. Back to home Copyright 1998 Advanstar Communications. Please send any technical comments or questions to the America's Network webmaster.