Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : IDT *(idtc) following this new issue?* -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawaii60 who wrote (7216)	5/4/1999 11:38:00 PM
From: CYBERKEN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 30916

Thank you, Hawaii. On a thread that is fast becoming a repository of spammers, ghost shorts, and naysaying rogues, your posts are a breath of fresh air.

To: Hawaii60 who wrote (7216)	5/4/1999 11:43:00 PM
From: Marty Rubin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 30916

h60, woo! tnx for the great post. i hope they do since IDT has many that are already familiar with their name and it'll be a first strong jump for the (ISP) unit. The backbone is already there and unless they start a $5 all-you-can-eat service, the system wouldn't be clogged as AOL was. BUT, we also know of the kind of netzero.com that will provide for free. Does that mean we should short AOL and Earthlik? People have tried....

To: Hawaii60 who wrote (7216)	5/4/1999 11:56:00 PM
From: Andrew H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 30916

Great post, Hawaii. Food for thought, indeed. >>Imagine what would happen if the company were to find a way, through advertising and other creative means to increase that membership by as much as 4 fold in say the next 30 days. Would that not increase the value to 160M minimum?<< Could they really increase subscribers four fold in a month?

To: Hawaii60 who wrote (7216)	5/5/1999 12:43:00 AM
From: vinh pham	Respond to of 30916

thanks, Hawaii, for such exciting thoughts on IDT's plans. now i'm going to have trouble falling asleep again, because i'll probably keep thinking about the potentially new China deal, possible AOL/IDT partnership, and the ISP's IPO. :-)

To: Hawaii60 who wrote (7216)	5/5/1999 12:49:00 AM
From: Plan B	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 30916

OK Hawaii, but here's another article from the same site which echoes my concerns: soundingboardmag.com In particular, this quote: "Right now, VoIP doesn't buy you much," argues Steve Hensley, vice president of engineering, GST Telecommunications Inc. (www.gstcorp.com). Largely that's because VoIP makes the most business sense as a way to gain rate arbitrage on high international calling rates. "That's where it makes most sense today, "notes Richard Shimizu, marketing director, Electric Lightwave Inc. (www.eli.net). "Costs are pretty low already for domestic long distance, so I don't see a lot of domestic IP voice traffic, at least [not]today." Also this re quality: "VoIP technological immaturity remains a factor, though most agree the wrinkles will be ironed out over the next several years. "The bottom line is that if you want to serve the business segment, you have to pay a lot of attention to quality," Elliott says. And, so far, packet delay (latency), packet loss (dropped packets) and other speech degradations remain key issues." Also from the article you quoted, (http://www.soundingboardmag.com/articles/951feat3.html) this statement I find rather poignant: "If you start from the perspective of standard voice service, IP telephony isn't comparable at this point," Dym notes. "But if you're coming from the perspective of adding voice to text chat or e-mail, it looks pretty cool." That points out what I said earlier that N2P is not quite ready for prime time. Furthermore it emphasizes the "gimmicky" nature of N2P. Now that's not to say that that alone doesn't have value. I just think we all ought to understand just exactly what VOIP and N2P is at this moment. This is why N2P is being spun off, it fits with the rest of the emerging net ideas like chat, ICQ, and so forth. It's difficult to predict what IDT will be after the spin off but certainly they will have to do more infrastructure building and partnering to be ready for the day when VoIP is prime time.