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

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1159)	8/24/1998 2:32:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

All, A good article on Level 3's Jim Crowe titled "Bell Buster" in the current Forbes Magazine, by Toni Mack with Carleen Hawn, at: forbes.com ================================================ Jim Crowe's Level 3 Communications has yet to connect a call, but it has the potential to become one of the world's most powerful telcos. Bell Buster By Toni Mack with Carleen Hawn AT&T HAS BEEN IN BUSINESS for 113 years and has $24 billion invested in telecommunications equipment. Level 3 Communications has been building its telecom network for all of one month and has yet to complete a single phone call. When it does so later this year, it will have something no other major telco can offer: Every single bit of its technology will be shining new. It's one of the paradoxes of the digital age that established companies can often find themselves at a big disadvantage against upstarts. Which helps explain why newly minted companies can take on powerful players like AT&T, WorldCom and SBC Corp. The battle is joined over circuit switching versus packet switching, two methods of connecting phone callers. AT&T and all the big phone networks that followed were built to connect a caller (or bank terminal or PC) at one spot to another across town or across the globe. With circuit switching the line is tied up until someone disconnects. You can see the inefficiency: It's like tying up one lane of a freeway for only one motorist. Packet switching chops the voices or data into small bits, each with the recipient's address. The packets then fly over whatever line is available and reconnect at the other end. Think of it like an airline counter where a single line of customers feeds many ticket agent positions ============================================== Regards, Frank C. ps - Bernard, still cogitating over the voice versus data bit consumption thing...