Business News - RBOCs Lose Their Jitters, Sign On With ITXC

Posted: 09/2000

RBOCs Lose Their Jitters, Sign On With ITXC
By Bruce Christian

The jitters are gone, and with them ITXC Corp. (www.itxc.com), a wholesale Internet telephony carrier, has announced it now is completing
RBOC-originated international phone-to-phone calls via the Internet for 13 of the 14 largest U.S.-based international carriers.

“For ITXC this is monumental,” says Mary Evslin, corporate spokesperson. “It really means that what press has been saying about the quality not being there, well it is there now. The quality works to the satisfaction of the RBOCs.”

Evslin, who pointed out that she was speaking through the Internet during the interview, calls the advancement “a huge accomplishment.”

“The RBOCs are just now beginning to get the authority to sell long distance, and they are in the process of just starting to do this,” Evslin says.

Because the RBOCs are not necessarily equipped for the change, ITXC has positioned itself to provide the service for them.

According to Evslin, ITXC already has the three things in place that assure voice quality: adequate bandwidth, proper equipment and the switching mechanisms.

With voice quality solved, Evslin adds that she sees how the future will continue to improve in the area of Internet telephony so that voice and data will move along the same broadband road.

“I can start pushing data to you while I’m talking to you,” she explains.

A prepared statement announcing its recent contract signings listed the 14 largest U.S.-based international carriers. She would not disclose which one have not signed.

In the company’s statement, chairman and CEO Tom Evslin said, “Traditional long-distance carriers, the RBOCs who used to be restricted to local traffic and web communication portals are now all competing with each other to offer retail long-distance service. ITXC now serves all three at the wholesale level.

“The Internet is changing the economics of voice communication. The quality of ITXC.net, which is assured by our patent-pending BestValue Routing technology, gives our customers the cost advantage of the Internet with the quality they need to deliver to their customers. In most cases, the callers do not know that their calls are being routed over the Internet. They just know they are getting the quality they expect from their carrier.”