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Microcap & Penny Stocks : DGIV-A-HOLICS...FAMILY CHIT CHAT ONLY!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Secret_Agent_Man who wrote (21986)	8/17/1998 9:21:00 AM
From: RocketMan	Respond to of 50264

Here are some excerpts from a SmartMoney article on VoIP. The story highlights IDTC, a great company (but trading at around $25), but these excerpts are relevant to DGIV as well. SmartMoney Interactive NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--With all the talk about the convergence of voice and data, one would think that "chatting" on the Internet would involve more than sending email or typing furiously in some Web chat room. Well, a group of service and equipment companies are betting that soon it will. Welcome to the world of Internet Protocol (IP) telephony, where voice is just another traveler on Internet networks. Other than the tech-savvy early adopters in this country, most of the current market for IP telephony is international. And although there is the potential for growth in the U.S., most analysts say that the future is predominantly international as well. David Smith of Technology Futures, a telecommunications research concern, believes that the international voice-over Internet Protocol market will grow from approximately $600 million today to $20 billion in 2003, while the domestic market will rise from $100 million to $4 billion. That's because telephony is much more competitive domestically; witness the variety of 10cent-per-minute phone plans flashing across your television screens. But internationally, the market isn't as crowded with good rates, and companies offering Internet voice connections can do so at much lower prices. Internet telephony bypasses the access costs that apply to standard telephone calls over circuit-switched networks. Voice is essentially compressed into packets of data and sent over the Internet through 'gateways" provided by the service companies. As Smith's estimates suggest, the possibilities are vast. And analysts on Wall Street are getting excited, too. "The potential for IP telephony will be huge," says Ulric Weil of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey.