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To: Tulvio Durand who wrote (17577)	10/1/1998 7:38:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 77399

Hi Tulvio, Your points, likewise, are well taken... although I'm not altogether sure if you are saying that voice will be free, or not. Which is it? >>the argument becomes moot if and when so much bandwidth becomes available at ever decreasing cost through ubiquitous fibers and DWDM so that both data and voice are transmitted with insignificant time delays.<< Your pre-supposition here, it seems, is that all of the costs associated with a phone call/webcall/IP session, are based on the cost of bandwidth alone. That's hardly the case, and I think that if you think about it, you will concur. Even in the ultra extreme case where gateways are used by enterprises for internal calls only, the gateways must be depreciated, and personnel must administer them, and the costs of cabling up the stations comes into play, etc., and there is still the dependency on having ISP links in place to support any and all forms of traffic. When voice is added to the mix, the bandwidth commitment is usually modified to take it into account, and sufficient head room is sometimes established to facilitate it. This does cost more, sometimes, incidentally, than the previous charges that were levied for data-only services. Not much more, but more, and the difference in quality is appreciable once the bandwidth on the on and off ramps, and the ISP's router port speed$, are boosted. But we are not talking about enterprise here, we're talking about Service Provider offerings in general, or at least I was, and in that realm it is a whole different story. That bandwidth is cheap and is getting cheaper, is unquestionably the case. But there are costs associated with every other supporting element of a voice call, including personnel; software and hardware licenses; inside and outside plant (biggies); a host of back office and regulatory fees, and a list of interoperability compliance issues too long to list here, that cannot go unnoticed, unrecovered, or unleveraged for profit. Tell you what: This doesn't seem to be the place to hold this exploratory kind of discussion. And that's what it is to me, an exploration since I don't pretend to know what the future holds in this regard. Allow me to PM the remainder of my reply to you, and if we see enough call for continuing it here (if you choose to) then I'd be happy to oblige. I wouldn't want to go too off-topic and burden the regulars here, unnecessarily. Regards, Frank Coluccio