VoIP

An ISP Does VoIP

Addaline, a new VoIP service, took center stage when a well-read blog featured the small and previously unknown company.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [December 1, 2003]

People have been paying attention to David Isenberg since at least 1997 when, as he notes in his Big Braggin' Bio, he wrote an essay called The Rise of the Stupid Network during a long weekend that, presumably, he wanted to spend indoors typing away at his computer. The fact that he was a noted employee of Bell Labs made it easier for people to find out about the essay.

On Friday, November 21, he wrote about several new VoIP companies and several that are already well-known. The company that caught our eye was started by an ISP.

Isenberg wrote, "One of my favorites is Addaline, just because it is such a down-home mom-n-pop shop. Calling packages start at $0.00—but to call out to the regular old obsolete telephone network will cost you $12.95 and up."

Sounded like a story for ISP-Planet.

We spoke with Greg Fausak, president and co-founder (the other co-founder is Andy Fulford). "We started the company this year," said Fausak. "We incorporated in February or March."

Dallas, Tex.-based Addaline was founded by local ISP August.net because the ISP could not find a good VoIP product to buy or resell. This is ironic, because the ISP was started between 1995 and 1999 by a software firm, August Associates, that could not find a good ISP!

"We went to all the conventions," explains Fausak. "We went to ISPCON, Internet Telephony, and the VON shows, looking for something to buy. But we couldn't find anything that someone like us could afford. In 2002, we decided to write our own software."

Dallas, we have liftoff
The launch was spectacularly successful. "We completed the software earlier this year. It's Web portal-based. We opened the website on June 15, 2003. Since then we've signed up over 3,000 people, which is more than we'd imagined would be possible."

3,000 subscribers seems especially large because the company's business-oriented ISP has been in business for about five years, and only has 2,000 (business) customers.

Addaline would like to reach out to more subscribers, and hopes to gain ISP customers interested in the type of VoIP solution that August.net was looking for but couldn't find.

Fausak feels that ISPs are particularly interested in a solution they can own-brand. "We've been working for the last three or four months on the branding engine. It's really pretty cool. We like the Mozilla editing engine (Firecracker) that allows users to edit a Web page online."

Fausak intends to build a system for ISPs that will allow them to change the look and feel of the software without affecting what it does. "We've separated the functionality, the nuts and bolts of routing calls and billing, from the design or artistic side."

He expects ISPs to be better artists than his company, but to need his company's technical expertise. He's used to working this way, as his background is in tech consulting.

For the moment, Addaline is working only with its richest customers. "People want us to do Addaline for them. But when we quote Verizon or NASA prices, they shy away. For now, we're branding it for our alpha customers who don't care what it costs. They're paying us a lot of money, which is nice."

Once its alpha customers are up and running, though, the company will be looking for beta customers, probably in January or February of 2004. "We'll be announcing this at VON in March of 2004," explains Fausak. The company needs deployments it can talk about that are up and running when it makes the announcement.

In order to offer calls to the regular phone system, which is also known as the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS), Addaline has to work with a CLEC. Fausak was not at liberty to disclose which company he is working with. Because the CLEC partnership is required, most small ISPs will prefer to work with a company like Addaline instead of trying to build their own VoIP system.

Fausak is enthusiastic about the technology. The company uses a SIP gateway and any of a wide variety of Internet-enabled phones. "For softphones, X10 is fantastic. Cisco has the Cisco 7960 hardware phone, then there's Pingtel. The Grandstream ATA 286 sells for $75."

In the future, calls could be enhanced in a number of ways. "You can use any CODEC, so you an include stereo and even video. You can tell the phone to try video first, then high quality audio, and then low quality audio."

In this future, the ISPs will provide services, and the phone company will be a dead dinosaur. Fausak chooses his words carefully. "As the VoIP network grows, and if it's not shot down by taxes and the powers that be, then eventually no calls will be routed over legacy networks."

—End