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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 (1803)	11/4/1998 12:54:00 PM
From: Pratip K. Banerji	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

What's the source for this article?

To: Stephen B. Temple who wrote (1803)	11/6/1998 9:08:00 AM
From: Stephen B. Temple	Respond to of 3178

FCC Delays Data Traffic Fees Ruling November 6, 1998 WASHINGTON - Federal regulators are putting off a decision on whether telephone companies have to continue paying each other fees for carrying data traffic to America Online and other Internet service providers that's en route to cyberspace. The Federal Communications Commission planned to address the matter Friday but now it isn't expected to take action for at least two weeks, commission officials said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity. The delay will give the FCC time to consult with state regulators, who are meeting next week in Florida, the officials said. The FCC is expected to propose phasing out these fees _ which total hundreds of millions of dollars _ once companies' current contracts expire over the next two years. The commission also plans to ask for public and industry comment on how carriers should compensate each other in the future. The decision would depend on a finding by the FCC that data traffic destined to Internet service providers, and from there to the Internet, is interstate communication. That would make it not subject to these fees, because they can be imposed only on traffic deemed local. But consumer groups said in a letter to the FCC Thursday that they worried, among other things, that deeming such traffic interstate communications could eventually lead to consumers' getting charged per minute rates for Internet use, like traditional long-distance calls. FCC officials, however, have said that won't be the case. ''The FCC may hope to avoid this outcome, but we have very serious doubts that it can,'' the Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America wrote. The groups urged the FCC to proceed cautiously so consumers won't get hit with higher phone or Internet prices. The compensation issue has pitted major local phone companies including GTE and the regional Bells against other phone companies called competitive local exchange carriers, or CLECs, such as ICG Communications, e.spire Communications Inc., MCI WorldCom and AT&T's Teleport. GTE and the Bells pay these and other phone companies millions of dollars more in fees than they take in. GTE and the Bells argue that this data traffic is interstate and not subject to termination fees, known as reciprocal compensation. But 23 state commissions have deemed that the traffic is local, is subject to termination fees and to their jurisdiction. The current payment system creates an incentive for CLECs to sign up Internet service providers as customers, rather than residential consumers, GTE and the Bells contend. Internet service providers have lots of phone lines to handle dial-up modem calls from cyberspace surfers and these calls are almost entirely incoming. As a result, a CLEC that serves mostly ISPs stands to reap much more in fees to terminate these calls than it pays out. [Copyright 1998, Associated Press]

To: Stephen B. Temple who wrote (1803)	11/6/1998 9:24:00 AM
From: Stephen B. Temple	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

TLTG a good play today? <gg>OzEmail Interline Announces a New Affiliate and Refile Agreements November 6, 1998 SYDNEY, Nov. 5 OzEmail Interline PTY Ltd, a subsidiary of OzEmail Limited (Nasdaq: OZEMY) today announced that it has signed a new affiliate and new refile partners for its Internet telephony network. The new Interline affiliate is Teltran (OTC Bulletin Board: TLTG), which also signed a multi-year refile agreement with Interline. This increases the total number of worldwide Interline affiliates to 15. Interline also announced that it has established a new refile hub in Los Angeles, California with two new refile providers, Pacific Gateway Exchange Inc. (Nasdaq: PGEX) and Telecom New Zealand (TNZ). "Adding new affiliates and refile hubs are important steps to building out our global Internet telephony infrastructure," stated J.B. Rousselot, Interline's Chief Executive Officer. "Additional affiliates and refile hubs guarantee the best value and level of service to our rapidly growing customer base." Interline is an international consortium of Internet telephony service providers. Built on technology developed by OzEmail and licensed by a partnership of OzEmail and Ideata, the Interline voice-over-IP ("VoIP ") solution provides a robust, secure Internet telephone routing network with a central billing and settlement system. By removing the key obstacles to delivering VoIP services -- technology investment, voice quality, international termination agreements, billing and settlement disputes -- Interline makes it easy for ISPs and others to begin delivering international VoIP services. Telephone calls on the Interline network will originate from Interline's affiliates around the world, which currently include companies in the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, South Korea, Indonesia, France. About OzEmail Interline OzEmail's Internet telephony business -- Interline -- is a partnership between OzEmail Ltd (88%) and Ideata PTY Ltd (12%), an Australian manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. Interline has developed and is operating technology that allows the placement, routing and billing of high quality voice services over the internet, using existing tone dial phones. Users need no special equipment, allowing individuals and corporations to place calls from their own IP infrastructures or telephones providing significant cost savings on long distance and international telephony. About OzEmail Limited OzEmail is the leading provider of comprehensive Internet services in Australia. The Company's Internet services are designed to meet the different needs of its residential and enterprise customers ranging from low cost dial up to high performance, continuous access services integrating the Company's ISDN offering and consulting expertise. SOURCE OzEmail Limited

To: Stephen B. Temple who wrote (1803)	11/6/1998 9:30:00 AM
From: Stephen B. Temple	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 3178

OT>> Bell Atlantic Maintains Monopoly, Blocks Consumer Choice Through Widespread Systems, Quality Failures for Competitors November 6, 1998 NEW YORK, Nov. 5 Challenging Bell Atlantic's (NYSE: BEL) claims that it has opened its local telephone monopoly to real competition, AT&T (NYSE: T) today provided detailed evidence of systemic failures in virtually all aspects of Bell Atlantic's provisioning operations that competitors need to serve New York consumers with improved and lower cost local telephone service. In a filing with the New York State Public Service Commission (NYPSC), AT&T cites numerous instances of Bell Atlantic missing installation deadlines, prematurely cutting off dial-tone for some customers switching to AT&T, and refusing to address service problems. "We can minimize the adverse impact of Bell Atlantic's deplorable performance when we're dealing with a handful of orders for large business by spending a lot of time, effort and money," said Michael Morrissey, AT& T's vice president of law and government affairs. "But for AT&T, or any other Competitive Local Exchange Company, to effectively move substantial numbers of smaller customers -- particularly residential consumers and small businesses -- from Bell Atlantic's network to its own requires efficient, reliable systems and processes to assure that customers receive continuous service. "Bell Atlantic has demonstrated that it cannot yet handle the task at hand and the independent NYPSC test as currently structured does not address these problems, but we wouldn't be surprised if the test is amended to include these operational issues." In fact, AT&T said, Bell Atlantic failed to meet basic five-day service-delivery deadlines, an industry standard, about 95 percent of the time during the last three months. Its actual service-delivery interval over this three-month period was more than 15 days. "Unless Bell Atlantic is made to address these serious problems, the vast majority of consumers in the Empire State will never be able to enjoy the benefits of competitive local telephone services," said Morrissey. At issue is the implementation of procedures and work performance that determine whether customers who have opted to switch local service providers can be transitioned, or "cut over," to their new carrier of choice without fear of service disruptions. Since concluding its merger with Teleport Communications Group in July, AT& T began to send hundreds of "cut over" orders for business customers to Bell Atlantic each month. While far short of the tens of thousands of such orders that Bell Atlantic would be expected to process in a fully competitive consumer marketplace, the requests provide some insights into Bell Atlantic's inability to handle these orders on a commercial basis, Morrissey said. The data compiled by AT&T and filed with the NYSPSC show that Bell Atlantic cannot deliver service within intervals that could be considered commercially reasonable or nondiscriminatory. For example: -- Bell Atlantic is supposed to provide a firm commitment of service delivery to AT&T within 48 hours of receiving an order. It is late more than 85 percent of the time, with actual average intervals ranging from six to 10 days. -- Bell Atlantic's firm order commitment is supposed to provide AT&T with a date on which the cut over is promised, so AT&T can perform its part of the cut over and inform the customer when to expect AT&T service. Bell has been late in meeting its own committed due dates, on average, 46 percent of the time. Its delivery is late by an average of more than three days. Delays of this sort could cause serious disruption to customer service, and in some cases would leave consumers with no local telephone service whatsoever, AT&T said. -- Other Bell Atlantic systems also perform poorly. A recent AT&T review found 15 percent of all lines switched to AT&T service by Bell Atlantic were improperly deleted from Bell Atlantic's directory assistance databases. While AT&T can manually monitor this problem and get Bell Atlantic to properly list a small number of business orders, it will be impossible to do this for thousands of consumer orders. "We now have empirical evidence that Bell Atlantic's failures are preventing consumers from having a competitive choice by preventing mass-market competition for consumers in the local market from taking root," said Morrissey. "As a result of these and other problems with Bell Atlantic's systems and processes, and despite great efforts by AT&T to overcome these problems, we believe that Bell Atlantic causes a serious service disruption to at least one in every four customer lines it has cut over for AT&T." While AT&T has been forced to incur substantial additional expense to ensure that these business customers receive the quality of service to which they are entitled, neither AT&T nor any other local service competitor could sustain such disruptions in serving the mass market for consumers and small businesses. Bell Atlantic is, quite simply, blocking the benefits of competition for the vast majority of New York consumers. SOURCE AT&T

To: Stephen B. Temple who wrote (1803)	11/9/1998 9:14:00 AM
From: Stephen B. Temple	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

Telstra Plans G-Lite Net Access For All November 9, 1998 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, Australia's largest telecommunications provider, Telstra Corp. [AUS:TLSCA], will outline technology which could see high-bandwidth G-lite Internet access running over most of Telstra's existing copper lines in the year 2000 at a conference next week. Telstra technology executives Phil Potter and Needet Ozegun will explain the technology, along with possible difficulties, at Globecom 98, being held in Australia for the first time. An outline published by Telstra Thursday says the new technology, also known as ADSL Lite, will be capable of access rates of 1500 kbps to the customer and 500 kbps from the customer. But it warns of barriers including crosstalk in older quad cables. Direct customer-to-customer ADSL will not be possible: all links will need to go through a carrier's network. Telstra has contributed to Globecom with sponsorship, technology help and voice boxes for the speaker program. On display will be digital watermarking - Telstra's technique for copyrighting digital images; WebDial 1800, which lets Internet surfers click on an icon to place a phone call; Virtual Second Line technology; and home networking technology