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Look for PSINet to add a few more PSIVoice VoIP services to its portfolio later this year--an extranet for calling business partners over PSINet's network and a remote one for road warriors. In 2000, PSINet also will add a consumer IP long-distance offering, possibly through carriers and other ISPs on a wholesale basis.

The next step for its extranet voice and data offering will be calling outside the PSINet backbone, which would entail gatewaying from PSINet to the PSTN. That will be a function of QoS and additional agreements among other VoIP service providers.

"In the near future, we are looking into terminating the PBX call to the PSTN," says Mohammed Abdallah, product manager for PSINet. "Most traffic is riding IP and the last leg hits the PSTN."

Infonet also is offering a business-class VoIP service, called VoiceWise, that is available only for overseas calling, outside an organization. "VoiceWise is for you if most of your calling is off-network and changes every month, say, to your export, shipping and finance operations," says Infonet's Bayer.

VoiceWise is available in the United States, United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany, and includes the necessary T1/E1 and ISDN BRI cards, as well as a VoIP gateway with an acceleration feature that compresses the voice traffic. Bayer says the service, which is priced per minute depending on the country, will offer businesses about 30 percent to 40 percent monthly savings in overseas calls.

Future features for VoiceWise include conference-bridging, caller ID and calling cards, as well as a PC-to-phone calling function that will become available later this month.

IP Telephony Providers
ICG Netcom is a hybrid IP telephony provider and ISP with its subsidiary, Netcom. It sells an IP long-distance service for consumers, and in the first half of this year it will add a VoIP termination service that will let enterprises cut some of their domestic long-distance charges outside their network with VoIP.

"There's not much more to the first generation of IP telephony than lowering someone's costs," says Jon Lowry, director and general manager of data services for Englewood, Colo.-based Netcom, which hasn't released pricing for the upcoming service. Netcom also plans to sell termination services to other ISPs on a wholesale basis.

Next up for ICG Netcom is an integrated voice, data and video service, says Lowry.

Meanwhile, pure IP telephony players include IDT of Hackensack, N.J., which today sells three services. Its VoIP PC-to-phone service, Net2Phone, offers long distance at 4.9 cents a minute; Net2Phone Direct provides calling-card service for 5 cents per minute; and Click2Talk is a click-and-talk Web service used by Lands' End, 1-800-FLOWERS and other retailers, who represent IDT's main business clientele.

IDT's proprietary Net2Phone software is its strategy for voice-enabling the Web. "It lets us handle customer profiles, credit-card authorization and close the sale," says Morty Rothberg, executive vice president of IDT. "Our vision is to build out our network and sell minutes to carriers."