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Technology Stocks : (LVLT) - Level 3 Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IndioBlues who wrote (1983)	5/20/1999 10:17:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3873

Indio, interesting release. Bandwidth has been swapped on the open market as far back as I can recall among carriers, and even some very large users. More recently these processes have been formalized, already, for 3 and up to six and 12 month commitments, typically. In '95 I recall the first mention of it becoming a future in the open outcry marketplace, along with some other unconventional issues, such as air pollution rights, with actual trading screen apparatus and regs, in a formal setting. Coffee, cotton and photons? In the past three years, there has been considerable movement in this direction, with several notable exchanges and clearinghouses set up to swap minutes of use where international voice services are concerned, and larger denominations of bandwidth, too. The models and the ideas are there. It's waiting for someone to kick it off big time. Could Enron be the one? The following is a release that tells another similar story, albeit for lower denominations of use. Regards, Frank Coluccio ======================== Brokers Trade Voice-over-IP Minutes By Sheridan Nye and Kenneth Cukier at CommunicationsWeek International 19-OCT-98 The sustained growth in bandwidth dedicated to voice over IP has spawned two new exchanges seeking to provide a trading floor for buyers and sellers of IP-telephony minutes. San Francisco-based RateXchange Inc. has carried offers and bids for voice-over-IP (VoIP) minutes since February, initially as a low voice-quality option within the exchange's market for international circuit-switched bandwidth. But strong growth in VoIP trading volumes and ever-improving quality prompted the creation of a dedicated exchange, said Sean Whelan, RateXchange's founder and president. Separately, Jeff Pulver, the high-profile Internet telephony consultant, created The Minutes Exchange (Min-X.com), a similar virtual commodities market for voice over IP. Both markets offer an on-line brokerage service allowing buyers to respond to the anonymous bids placed by sellers. The parties are then put in contact to finalize deals. Managed delivery While Pulver intends to leave it "up to our customers to manage the quality of their IP minutes," RateXchange plans to expand its brokering service for VoIP to includemanaged delivery within the next year. The company launched its Real-Time Bandwidth eXchange for traditional voice minutes last month with switches in New York and Los Angeles, enabling carriers based in the two cities to set up and test circuits and to complete deals within days rather than weeks. Pulver said he may later expand Min-X.com's scope to include trading in bandwidth minutes in GSM, cable, satellite and PSTN traffic. In the meantime, both Min-X.com and RateXchange have a major competitor to contend with. U.S. carrier AT&T this month unveiled the AT&T Global Clearinghouse service, which will manage routing, settlements, billing and administration as well as providing a brokerage for global VoIP minutes. Members can terminate IP calls on the public telephone network in the 140 countries reached by AT&T's network. Pulver welcomed AT&T's move, which he claimed would not alleviate the need for operators to maintain their bilateral agreements. "While it's OK for a carrier to terminate the minutes of Internet telephony service providers, most carriers won't let just anybody terminate their minutes," he said. The announcement marks the global rollout of services AT&T began earlier this year in Asia, and takes the U.S. giant into the territory of third party clearinghouses, such as Princeton, New Jersey-based ITXC Corp. ==========================