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

To: Stephen B. Temple who wrote (1648)	10/22/1998 9:27:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

Stephen, >>I had no idea that much loss would occur; << Out of the roughly 45 Mbps a T3 has to offer, the normal overhead is like I stated, about 10 Mbps sucked up by ATM headers and management data. Another 6 Mbps gets lost to the world of SONET overhead between the 45 Mbps rate of the T3 and the ~51 Mbps OC-1/STS-1 rate. Mostly line, path and section overhead. That's a total of 16 Mbps of overhead for every T3 ATM stream that takes SONET, enough for a 16 Mbps Token Ring to get through. In all fairness though, the latter 6 Meg also gets lost to SONET for IP T3s as well. Can't get away from it on SONET, [without kludging into the overhead space to use unused fields of data... which has actually been done in a pinch, such as using the carrier's internal data comm channels reserved for system management. But this is uncommon, and not orthodox... just thought I'd throw it in.] But this brings to the table another set of arguments, those being that bandwidth pricing is going down and that the WAN is now taking on the attributes of a LAN... therefore no need to worry about such lavishness. Treating bandwidth lavishly, due to its one-time sunk costs in buildings and campuses, after all, is how LANs are allowed to proliferate at the speeds that they do. In actuality, it's difficult to draw a conclusion as to whether or not this ATM overhead is more detrimental than the much lesser amounts of superficial overhead lost in IP streams. The reason for this is that up until now, ATM has been deterministic (meaning that if it enters the pipe it almost always gets to where it is intended to go) versus the "probabilistic" nature of IP, and its sometimes circuitous (way too many hops at times) means of getting where it is intended to go, "most of the times." Newer routing schemes are supposed to take care of this shortcoming, but the closer they get to accomplishing these kinds of improvements, the more they take on the attributes of ATM. And ATM is getting to look more like IP all the time, too. I hear wedding bells in the not-too-distant future.... although this may be one of those open marriages, of sorts. Regards, Frank Coluccio

To: Stephen B. Temple who wrote (1648)	10/28/1998 8:09:00 AM
From: Stephen B. Temple	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

Don't even try to rain on my parade!! <gg> FCC seen claiming authority over Internet calls October 28, 1998 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reuters [BR] via NewsEdge Corporation : The Federal Communications Commission is expected to decide as soon as Friday that telephone calls people make to connect their computers to Internet service providers are more like long distance calls than local calls and therefore subject to the agency's jurisdiction. But the agency will try not to reverse rulings by 23 states that the regional Bell companies must pay hundreds of millions of dollars to upstart local carriers on such calls, people familiar with the agency's plans said Tuesday. If a majority of the commission's five members can agree on such an approach, the Bells would have to pay the charges in dispute to new carriers including units of long distance giants MCI WorldCom Inc. and AT&T Corp. as well as smaller firms like e.spire Communications Corp. based in Annapolis, Maryland, and Focal Communications Corp. of Chicago, Ill. But, under that approach, as existing contracts between the companies expired over the next year, the FCC would reform the charges, called ''reciprocal compensation,'' to reduce or eliminate the one-sided payments that flow to carriers serving Internet providers. ''The current reciprocal compensation gravy train is running out of track,'' said industry analyst Scott Cleland of Legg Mason Precursor group. ''This may come as a surprise to some people but they were in denial.'' Industry and agency officials said the commission's plans were still in flux on Tuesday, but the broad outlines of a decision had formed. The agency must issue a narrower but related decision on a service offered by GTE Corp. by Friday and is aiming to complete the reciprocal compensation issue at the same time in a separate decision, they said. The legality of the massive payments turns on whether calls to Internet service providers are more like ordinary local calls, subject to fee arrangements between carriers but not the FCC's authority, or are more like long distance calls, regulated by the FCC but not subject to fee exchanges. Under the arrangements negotiated between the Bells and new local carriers, companies must pay each other a small fee for completing the local calls of each other's customers. Payments are not required for long distance calls. So far, 23 states including California, Texas and New York have ruled that calls to Internet service providers are like local calls and that the large local carriers must pay fees. The FCC plan would find that, for future reference, the calls should be treated like long distance calls but that since the agency had not made a clear statement earlier, the decisions by the states covering prior arrangements between companies should stand. The Bells, including New York-based Bell Atlantic Corp. , Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp. and San Antonio, Texas-based SBC Communications Inc., have argued unsuccessfully to the states that calls to Internet providers should be treated as long distance and exempted from reciprocal compensation. When the contracts were negotiated several years ago, the Bells pushed for reciprocal compensation expecting that they would be completing many more calls for the new carriers than the new carriers would be completing for them. But the new carriers turned the agreements to their advantage by serving the modem banks of Internet providers, which receive thousands of calls from their customers but never make any calls. REUTERS@ [Copyright 1998, Reuters]