From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Aug 29 13:30:28 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA26592 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 29 Aug 1997 13:30:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from brickbat9.mindspring.com (brickbat9.mindspring.com [207.69.200.12]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA26586; Fri, 29 Aug 1997 13:30:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mhaggag.fscorp.com (user-37kb0eu.dialup.mindspring.com [207.69.129.222]) by brickbat9.mindspring.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id QAA23919; Fri, 29 Aug 1997 16:29:55 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19970829163025.00697814@mindspring.com> X-Sender: funcomputers@mindspring.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 16:30:25 -0400 To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, questions@FreeBSD.ORG From: Mike HAGGAG Subject: Long Distance Service offered by ISPs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Web Phone has been around for quite a while now. I recently read something about an alliance between AT&T, Dialogic and VocalTec (makers of Web Phone) to develop phone services using the Internet. Imagine any individual anywhere in the world being able to lift his phone's handset at phone, place a LOCAL call to his local ISP, enter a code (or a PIN), then dial a long distance call (to next city or around the world). The call would be routed over the Internet to another ISP in the destination city who would route the call to the person being called. All for no cost to either the caller or the callee other than their monthly fee to their respective ISPs. Now imagine this being setup in an organized way and almost overnight, ISPs all over the world are breaking phone companies' monopolies for good. Maybe that's whay phone companies (AT&T, Sprint, MCI etc...) got on the Internet access providing game so quickly... they saw this coming... I'd like to get some feedback from y'all on this since I despise phone companies' monopolies and I've toying with the idea of starting a ISP myself... Regards