The Next Web Battle: Phone Calls

Dozens Of Upstarts Race To Stake Out New Turf In A Blooming Market
By Rebecca Blumenstein

12/27/1999
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright © 1999, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Web talk is serious business. After years of experimentation, Internet phone calls are becoming commonplace, and dozens of players are securing big backers and partnerships to get in on the chat. Some companies are specializing in the backbone needed to route such calls from one personal computer to another. Others are assembling Internet White Pages, since there is no common standard for Internet phone numbers such as area codes...

... A remaining challenge [in providing Internet calling services to customers] is compiling a universal address book to allow PCs logged on to rival services to call each other.

"It's not going to do any good to have several million software phones and no way to complete the call," says Michael O'Donnell, president of visitalk.com, a Phoenix start-up that assigns each user a permanent global number. Among the company's major investors is China.com, one of China's biggest Web companies...

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