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Technology Stocks : VocalTec (VOCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HVN who wrote (1717)	9/13/1998 2:28:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2349

HVN, In order to get an accurate depiction of the media and protocol mix used by any carrier at any point in time, one would have to sit down at their network control center consoles and view the configs. They can change their fabric at will, or dynamically, in order to meet changing load requirements. Pure Play VoIP startups can't do this at this time, obviously, because they have neither the base of operations or the mix of connections to allow this. IDT, however, along with several others, can. I can only speculate, then, what the delivery platforms are that they are using at any point in time. Overflows are common, whereby a carrier will first assign a call to a group of circuits that match the service offering being subscribed to, and when those circuits are fully depleted (as in an all circuits busy condition) due to heavy usage, calls will overflow onto alternate paths, even onto their more expensive circuits, if there is a surplus of those available to pick up the slack. Cheaper calls, however, will not ordinarily preempt the more expensive ones in periods of heavy usage, for obvious reasons. >> However, with IDT, the rates they charge, they've have to be significantly VOIP (given how low cost VOIP is) rather than CSwithed (and we do know that VOIP already costs about a 10th of CS). << Once transmission line facilities are leased by resellers and facilities based carriers -and this goes for both CS or VoIP provisions- they become sunk costs in the formulae [unless they are dynamically acquired on demand under some form of channel capacity arbitrage scheme], and as long as they are available and not being used for the moment, they will be used to satisfy traffic demand even for lower tiered offerings. Per-call cost averaging strategies come into play here with some carriers, and more than likely, IDT subscribes to this principle, although I can't speak to IDT's specific strategies with certainty. As an aside, I can recall viewing the AT&T Long Lines status board years ago, and watching calls being re-routed to the most circuitous regions of the country when congestion conditions arose. A call, say, from NY to Philadelphia, could be routed to Dallas, then to Seattle, then to Pittsburgh, and eventually to Philly. Costing and Pricing reflected these capabilities, although the specifics were never spelled out, because, as you say, So What! As long as you received the intended product, which was a connection to your called party in Philly. Just some additional thoughts, and thanks for the reply. Regards, Frank Coluccio