Net telephony gets a free ride on Web
Analysis/Commentary
In 1966, a small company called Carterfone defied the granddaddy of
telcos, AT&T. The Carterfone was a "third-party device" (a radio phone) that attached with a coupling to an ordinary telephone. After two years
of litigation, the Federal Communications Commission ruled third-party devices could be attached to a telephone network as long as
they did no harm to the network. In 1975, the FCC codified the ruling,
making way for publicly-sold telephone equipment, and eventually modems. That was the beginning of the Net's free ride on the back of the
telephone system.
Now Net telephony, the software voice-data connections that link
computers to computers and PCs to telephones and
even telephones to telephones over computer connections, heralds a
new age of telephone communication. Already hundreds of vendors
invite Internet consumers to make long-distance calls free, or offer
long-distance charges that can't be beat. How good are these services
and why do the telcos acquiesce to their evolution? Here's an attempt
at an answer.
Businesses learned long ago that you can't fight the voice of the
people, but you can certainly profit from it. The telcos buy into voice
telephony and make profits from the extra lines and services that an
expanding Internet entails. Possibly, the telephone companies feel that
the coexistence or synergy of the two services outweighs the constraints
of a one-sided FCC ruling. They've learned from the Carterfone fiasco that
government doesn't always back big business.
But Net telephony, despite its surprising growth over the past two
years, remains an infant. Most services require plug ins, add-on programs
that allow a computer to read and send voice transmissions. Many Net phone
calls still have the quality of cheap walkie-talkies -- voice packets tend to
get lost, creating jumps in audio, and the voice data tends to get bogged
down in router queues while getting distributed to its destination.
Businesses usually take the poor quality audio in stride, reflecting on
the thousands of dollars they save on calls to Japan and other business
hubs. They can also afford to finetune their equipment for best performance.
Average home users, however, must still meet a variety of technical
requirements. They must read and understand the instructions of telephony
vendors and they must upgrade their equipment to crunch audio data
effectively. This usually involves installing a cutting-edge sound
card, buying a headphone and mike, and running a Pentium-class computer. A 486 simply doesn't make the grade.
The advantages of Net telephony for home users are obvious.
Long-distance calls can be made for free. At worst, Net telephony
reduces phone bills; at best, it provides ubiquity -- a channel of
long-distance communication that ordinary citizens might never have
afforded before the Internet. Youngsters can use audio-phones like
messagers, or dial up friends in distant lands whom they meet in
audio chat rooms.
The FCC has been patient about the development of Net telephony despite a mandate to regulate telephone communications, in part because it vows to avoid regulating the Internet, and in part because Net telephony serves as a platform for experiment toward a time when the Net will achieve high-quality voice and motion. This probably won't happen until broadband becomes the standard in years to come.
December 8, 1999
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