Internet telephony about to get off hold

Relatively speaking, Internet telephony doesn’t amount to much more than spitting in the ocean when it comes to voice communications.

Only a small percentage of the nation’s voice traffic originates using VoIP, or voice over Internet protocol, although a significant portion of long-distance calls uses the technology.

JON VAN

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But at the recent Supercomm telecom show in Chicago, the shift to VoIP lurked everywhere. VoIP provides voice communication at far lower cost than traditional voice networks, as well as giving users computerized control of their calling options.

Carriers realize that these advantages make VoIP a winner, and they’re scrambling to figure out how to exploit the technology rather than fight it.

Typical of the smaller companies that attracted attention at Supercomm is Go2Call, an Evanston company that specializes in supplying VoIP services to users in foreign countries.

Internet service providers are natural customers for Go2Call, said Larry Spear, co-founder of the firm, because they have a customer base and are looking for new services that can increase revenue. Go2Call also works with established phone firms looking to offer VoIP and has customers from India to Africa.

The firm can offer its service over regular phones as well as over devices that look like regular phones but plug into computers rather than standard phone jacks.

VoIP transmits calls the same way that computers send electronic mail, by breaking the information into packets and sending them into a general stream with other packets. At the receiving end, the relevant packets are reassembled into voice by computer chips.

An inherent problem is when the packets don’t arrive on time, causing a degradation of the sound. The technology has improved dramatically, and several experts attending Supercomm said there’s no reason why VoIP call quality shouldn’t be comparable to that of traditional circuit-switched calls.

"Now that voice has become another data application, voice quality has to be high," said Dean Douglas, IBM’s telecom vice president. "It’s not easy–the technology needs tweaking–but they’re very close right now to circuit-switch call quality."

College students using computers to talk to friends overseas at no charge may be willing to put up with static on the line, but business operators will demand top quality calls before they adopt VoIP for their enterprises, said Ed Mattix, senior vice president with Covad Communications. The company is in the process of adding voice to the high-speed data services it sells to businesses.

"We guarantee quality end-to-end," said Mattix. "If you can’t do that, you won’t get the business."

It has been technically possible for more than a decade to divide voice into packets for transmission, but in the early days quality was very poor, said Jeffrey Jaffe, president of Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs. Today, quality should not be an issue, he said.

"Technologically, we can deliver carrier-grade VoIP cost-effectively," said Jaffe. "Our nation deserves it. We shouldn’t have to sacrifice quality. It’s hard, but we know how to do it."

Interest growing: Despite the buzz VoIP is causing in the telecom industry, it has yet to burst upon the consciousness of most people, a new survey suggests.

Only about one-quarter of people who use the Internet have heard of VoIP, according to research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the New Millennium Research Council.

The survey also found that about 4 million Americans are considering getting VoIP for their home service. The expectation is that those numbers will rise in the coming months.

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