Internet telephony has been a rough science, more akin to walkie-talkies than Ma Bell. As voice packets try to fight their way through the Net's data hodge-podge, interruptions and poor sound quality have tainted the experience.
A new company called Networks Telephony Corp. says it has solved some of the technical shortcomings of voice over IP - by using a private data network instead of the Internet - and has developed the software and network connections to make way for clear, PC-based phone calls to nearly any country in the world. Calls will cost about 30 percent to 50 percent less than telcos charge, the company says.
CAIS Internet, a Virginia-based backbone provider, will initiate the service on 20 October, and then comarket it to Internet service providers. In order to connect to the system, an ISP would need to buy and install NTC’s I-Bridge hardware/software device, which transfers caller data to a private, international data communications network owned by Infonet Services Corp. Using a voice-prioritization technique, the calls will be routed to one of Infonet's 37 nodes around the world, which in turn pass off calls to a dedicated phone network. In acting as a "bridge," ISPs will collect a percentage of each call that passes through their network.
To use the highest level of the new service, consumers need to be signed up with one of the participating ISPs (beyond CAIS, no list is yet available), download NTC’s free dialpad software, and have a PC equipped with Windows 95, Internet access, a sound card, a microphone, and speaker or handset.
Users can also place Net calls without going through one of the participating ISPs, but the data would then travel across the Internet, possibly degrading the signal.
"Potentially it could result in some interruption," says Mike Radice, vice president of marketing and production for NTC, a private company based out of El Segundo, California. "But our research indicates that's not really a problem."
Bypassing the Internet carries some commercial advantage for NTC, one analyst says.
"NTC has the chance to be a local leader by franchising this IP voice technology," said Jeff Pulver, an Internet telephony analyst with Pulver.com. "They don't need to become an industry standard to succeed."
Sanjay Mewada, senior analyst at the Yankee Group, a Boston-based research and consulting group that specializes in telecommunications, said, "It's too early to say if this will be the industry standard. But in this game, it's who is at market, and whose product is more industrial strength."
