BY LAURA GUEVIN
Managing Editor, INTERNET TELEPHONY

Voice Over Packet:
Do Customers Have A Right To Know?

I had a nice phone conversation with my father last weekend, and perhaps the nicest part about it was the fact that he called me, since we live 3,000 miles apart. He gets a cheap long-distance rate on Sundays, and we had a good clear conversation, as we always do. But during our talk he mentioned that the small company he works for got a new and much cheaper long-distance provider not long ago. And while hes been happy with the service overall, hes noticed that since they changed providers, his long-distance calls often contain "repeated voice" (a.k.a. echo), something he had never experienced before.

After hearing that, my voice-over-packet quality of service flag went up, and I decided to do some investigating. The long-distance provider his company uses is Lightyear Communications (formerly UniDial Communications), and they offer converged voice and data services. In fact, their main area of focus these days is offering voice, video, and data services to the customer premise over one digital T1 line, connected to integrated access devices (IADs) provided by Accelerated Networks. Lightyear plans on deploying a collapsed central office model from Tachion Networks, which will provide Class 5 switch offload. But my fathers company doesnt do much business over the Internet, and neither his satellite office nor his companys main office, which is also using Lightyear for long-distance, have a need for that kind of bandwidth. In fact, both offices have separate dial-up Internet connections through local ISPs and use regular circuit-switched phone lines for their voice service.

I spoke with Kent Lanum, director of product development for Lightyear, who told me the companys new converged network is largely ATM-based at the core (that stands for Asynchronous Transfer Mode, a popular cell-based method for switching data), so calls are ultimately routed in digital/packet format for the long haul. This is not unusual, in fact, most major long-distance providers route their calls over frame relay or ATM these days, including Williams Communications, one of Lightyears major partners. ATM is often touted as a reliable, speedy alternative to circuit switching, since it allows for dynamic bandwidth allocation and therefore quality of service and can handle volumes more data than circuit traffic. So why do my fathers phone calls contain echo? Lanum said its an unusual situation, and it could be a problem with a connection to one of their partner networks, which also include WorldCom.

THE LARGER ISSUE OF KNOWLEDGE
Okay, so I got a little eager in thinking that the calls were being routed over IP without customers knowledge, when really theyre being routed in the same way most long-distance calls are carried. The echo could be coming into the picture at any point in the extended network, and the cause of the problem is a mystery so far. But I got to acquaint myself with Lightyear as a result of the problem, and they proved to be a promising player in the convergence space. This whole incident got me to thinking about the slew of long-distance providers offering cheap service out there, and how they are routing calls. Look at Net2Phone and NETtel Communications, which offer retail phone-to-phone VoIP services, and other providers like ICG Netcom who are buying wholesale VoIP from companies like GRIC, ITXC, and iBasis, and selling service directly to customers. These companies use a combination of frame relay, ATM, leased lines, and the public Internet to route traffic. All are offering low-rate long-distance services, and each company is routing calls over an IP-based network. That brings me to the question Id like to raise in this weeks column: Do customers have a right to know their calls are being routed over IP whether over a public or private network?

I already know Net2Phones stance on this topic, and its a viewpoint that is fairly prevalent in this industry. In an interview with TMC President Rich Tehrani last month (see the June issue of Internet Telephony for the full interview), Sarah Hofstetter, vice president of corporate communications for Net2Phone, voiced her views. "Provided that the service is toll quality, there is no need to let the customer know whether or not the call is routed over IP. The quality should be so good that it is irrelevant," said Hofstetter. And Scott Milener, director, business development for eVoice, a communications ASP providing hosted voice mail, believes ITSPs should not be required to tell customers calls are traveling over IP "unless asked. Its not a feature, its a technical detail. The features are price, quality, and availability," said Milener.

I agree that most customers couldn't care less how their phone calls travel from one point to the next, as long as they pick up the receiver and get dial tone, and are able to make a clear quality call. But we all know that voice transport over IP is still not perfect, and there will be occasions when echo and latency come into play. If I was in the middle of a phone call and noticed that type of quality degradation, I would want to know why it was happening. And its not that the companies mentioned above are keeping it a secret that they use IP theyre just not advertising it.

Im eagerly waiting to hear from my father, to find out why hes getting echo on long-distance calls. Is it a problem with the ATM network? Is one of Lightyears partners using another type of packet switching to route calls? Id also like to hear from long-distance callers out there. Would you want to know if your calls were being routed over IP? Do customers have a right to know before they sign up for service?

Laura Guevin welcomes your comments at lguevin@tmcnet.com.