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Technology Stocks : FunPhone.com planning to go public? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Josef Svejk who wrote (12)	3/26/1999 8:29:00 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie	Respond to of 647

Josef, Today, it isn't anybody that is touting "voice on the Internet". Simple reason is that the current internet infrastructure is made up of a whole bunch of equipment that wouldn't know the difference between a voice packet and a data packet. That means that all packets have the same priority and therefore your voice packets are delivered with the same lack of alacrity that your data is. Computers don't mind this delay, but humans do. On the outside, a human will tolerate about 250 milliseconds of delay before he/she finds the conversation irritating. I believe that the Bellcore specs call for 150 milliseconds of end to end delay. This is not to say that you cannot make telephony work on the internet, just that it isn't that reliable and the quality can vary from being ok to sucking doorknobs. There are networks being deployed and services being offered that do have the ability to provide this QoS on data networks, but they are not using the "internet". AT&T is doing it, the Sprint ION network will be doing it, WCOM, Netcom and there will be others that use these networks for transport that will be able to offer the service. When someone is able to guarantee the delivery and priority of the voice packets on the internet, you will have a viable product. And, yes, I do believe that it will happen someday. JXM