The Chinese Government, VoIP, and You

ITXC Corp.'s agreement with China Telecom makes its international VoIP services more attractive than ever, and the buildout of its network may be a revenue opportunity for you. It's got the US covered, but is interested in termination for international calls to other countries.

ISP-Planet Staff
[May 1, 2000]

Princeton New Jersey-based tier-one carrier and net telephony company ITXC Corp. (NASDAQ: ITXC) is looking for quality ISPs and gateways for its international VoIP network. VoIP is set to explode as the Chinese market opens up.

The News
On Monday May 1, ITXC announced that the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (MII) had approved VoIP, upgrading it from a trial service to an approved service. Furthermore, the MII authorized four companies, including China Telecom, to provide VoIP services. ITXC has a prior agreement with China Telecom.

“China Telecom has done a great job during the trial of demonstrating the value of Internet telephony not only for cost savings but also for speed of deployment,” said Tom Evslin, Chairman and CEO of ITXC. “In one month they were able to bring sixteen cities online for both domestic traffic and international traffic through ITXC.net™ [ITXC.net is ITXC's network of affiliates]. This speed is necessary to support both quickly growing teledensity in China and the international traffic which is an essential part of increased commerce.”

Termination
ITXC's pitch to you, the independent ISP is essentially that if you can support their QoS standards, they can provide an additional source of revenue for you. And supplying cheap international phone calls might improve customer loyalty.

(If you've tried VoIP as part of dialup service, and are a small ISP, send us email describing your experience.)

If you're a larger ISP with multiple POPs in major cities, you can work with ITXC to become a gateway. A gateway operator can choose to bring a T1 to one of ITXC's switches in New York or Los Angeles, co-locate an ITXC SNARC or to operate its own Cisco, Clarent, or VocalTec gateway.

What do they get from you? ITXC charges wholesale prices for services that you can resell at retail, and ITXC needs as many PoPs as it can get. As of May 1, 2000, ITXC has 245 PoPs in 143 cities in 57 countries. It's got the US covered, but is interested in termination for international calls to other countries. An ISP located in a country where international calling is very expensive has a great opportunity to make money by terminating international calls.

This offer won't be for everyone: it's not the only game in town, and we suggest investigating all alternatives. But this is one alternative you should not ignore.

webtalkNOW!
If you're interested in offering PC to phone services, ITXC offers webtalkNOW! software. ITXC provides immediate entry into the Web-based calling market with webtalkNOW!. ITXC operates a global network, manages quality, approves clients and gateways, and bills the ISP a wholesale price for the services it purchases. The ISP can bill its customers for the calls or give the service away, whatever fits its business model.

VoIP
If VoIP is new to you, see our section on VoIP, in the Technology orbit, and Piper Jaffray's bullish report on Internet Telephony.

Also see this Forbes article, Cutting-Edge Telecom.

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