Telephony and faxing on the Net
New technology allows low cost communications over the Internet
By Doug Harper -- Industrial Distribution, 2/1/1998
When the Internet first became popular several years ago, industrial distributors tended to regard it as an interesting but largely irrelevant novelty that had little bearing upon their business.Over the years, however, many distributors have increasingly come to rely upon Internet e-mail as a rapid and inexpensive substitute for printed correspondence sent by traditional "snail mail'' through the U.S. Postal Service.
In fact, in many distributorships e-mail has also significantly cut into the use of conventional fax transmissions when the message to be sent is limited to text, and the destination entails long distance or international phone charges. But thanks to rapidly emerging technology, distributors no longer have to choose between incurring the higher cost of long-distance telephone and faxing or enjoying the economies of the Internet.
A newly created infrastructure complete with standards, peripherals and software is enabling the Internet to handle phone calls and faxes as well as e-mail. While Internet telephony is still in its infancy -- currently accounting for an estimated $10 million in sales -- experts are forecasting that within two years Internet telephony will become a $2 billion a year business.
At the 1997 PC Expo held at New York's Javits Convention Center, a panel of technology executives said that within the next five-to-ten years, at least half of all long distance telephone calls will be conducted over the Internet. While the panel noted that the circuit-switched long distance networks commonly used today will not give up their monopolies without a fight, the low cost of Internet long distance and international access will substantially undercut the current price of long distance calls.
Internet telephony works by allowing the caller to access his Internet Service Provider through a local phone call. The Internet then carries the signal to the local phone company in closest proximity to the call's recipient. In most cases, this requires the user to pay for the equivalent of two local calls plus his ISP's service, rather than any long distance charges. Obviously, the greater the distance the call travels, the greater the savings.
Meanwhile, companies are rushing in to make Internet telephony as "transparent'' as is currently the case when using a conventional switched-circuit long distance carrier. These new companies will handle the Internet routing behind the scenes, eliminating the necessity of the caller retaining an ISP or even having access to a computer. Worldwide long distance heavy-hitters including AT&T and Deutsche Telekom are already becoming involved in the new technology by staking out equity positions with the leading providers in the field.
If there is a downside to the appeal of Internet telephony, it is that the Internet's limited bandwidth is currently proving a challenge to the attainment of real-time, fully duplexed (simultaneous) high quality voice communications.
On the other hand, the Internet in its present stage of evolution is already ideally suited to the demands of faxing, which is also expected to burgeon over the next several years. It has been estimated that the average Fortune 500 company spends about $1.5 million annually on faxes, while the combined total for all U.S. corporations is in the neighborhood of $30 billion a year.
And unlike telephony, faxing is a one-way transmission where instantaneous real-time reception is not a critical factor. When faxing takes place over the Internet, the original is sent from a computer's fax modem or a standalone fax machine to the ISP, where it is converted into "packets" and sent to the ISP nearest to the recipient. The message is then converted back into its original format and transmitted to another computer or fax machine.
Experts say that, as in Internet telephony, savings of as much as 50-to-75% can accrue from very long distance and international faxing. On the other hand, using Internet faxing for distances of under a thousand miles may actually prove to be more expensive.
But plain old e-mail will still be more than adequate to send your suggestions to Doug Harper at: dharper@interport.net.
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