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

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (339)	4/2/1999 10:04:00 AM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Respond to of 647

That august publication, The Red Herring, weighs in:"What now for voice over IP? By Peter D. Henig Red Herring Online April 1, 1999 ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA -- "Voice over IP is one of the most misunderstood processes out there," said Stephen Davis, vice president for DirectNet Telecommunications, a telecom wholesaler of minutes that targets emerging world markets. "For getting around settlement costs, it's fine ... but for simple voice termination, and in terms of quality of service, it's not enough." Or is it? Dr. Elon Ganor, president and CEO of VocalTec Communications (VOCLF), claims that as the computer becomes more of a communications device, voice over IP will become the dominant method for transmitting calls. Rumor even has it that Cisco Systems (CSCO) CEO John Chambers has vowed to have his employees making calls fully over the Internet before the year is out. "The equipment is cheaper, the quality is improving at an unbelievable pace, and in less than a year, you won't be able to tell the difference between a regular phone call and an IP telephony call," Dr. Ganor said in his Tuesday keynote address at the Telecom Business '99 conference in Anaheim, California. "PC to phone is growing huge, and the Internet is just a call waiting to happen." EVERYONE'S DOING IT... Although the large carriers haven't made that big of a stink about their voice-over-IP initiatives, Dr. Ganor says they're well on their way to rolling out IP telephony capabilities. "There are many projects with the large carriers going on right now," he said. "But they're very secretive. ... Every major carrier is in trials and looking at it carefully." If anything, massive competition -- rather than massive demand -- is what's driving voice over IP. Because the barriers to entry in IP telephony are so much lower than in traditional switched networked voice services, literally hundreds of companies have entered the market in the past six months. Dr. Ganor estimates that it costs 27 times more to build a traditional network than it costs to build a new IP network, and says that networks using IP platforms are far cheaper and easier to maintain. As an example, VocalTec's CEO said that a company like ITXC can enter a country and set up voice-over-IP capabilities in "not a year, not six months, not a month ... a week." Yet others say they still wouldn't depend on it for their own phone calls. ... JUST NOT ON MOTHER'S DAY "I don't have a problem with IP-centric networks, but the quality of service is still not there yet," said Paul Savill, vice president of network planning for Williams Network. Patrick Currie, CFO and acting CEO of DirectNet Telecommunications, agrees -- kind of. "[Quality] is there over the private networks, over extranets," he said. "We use it ourselves between our offices in Newport Beach and Prague, but not over the public network." However, for the ultimate test among the traditional carriers -- calling home on Mother's Day -- voice over IP has a long way to go. "Would I use it to call my mom on Mother's Day? No, I'd rather pay more and have no problems," said Robin Rogers, an independent telecom analyst attending the conference in Anaheim. What about Father's Day? "The way my dad treated me? I'd use the Internet in a second." redherring.com