By Frances Williams in Geneva. Published: March 6 2001
20:43GMT | Last Updated: March 7 2001 10:00GMT. Financial
Times
Developing countries will be urged to embrace rather than restrict the new
internet telephony technologies at a policy forum hosted by the International
Telecommunication Union which starts in Geneva today.
Though internet-protocol (IP) telephony accounted for only 3.2 per cent of
international calls (3.8bn minutes) last year, some analysts believe that
proportion could jump to as high as 40 per cent by 2004.
IP telephony, now being used or developed by about 100 countries, cuts costs
for both consumers and telecoms operators. However, according to the ITU, some
35 mostly developing countries, among them Cuba, India, Nigeria,
Thailand and Turkey, ban voice and sometimes fax communications over IP-based
networks, mainly because the dominant, often state-owned, carriers fear erosion
of revenues.
Because IP telephony largely bypasses the public switched telephone networks
(PSTNs), it also tends to escape the existing regulatory and financial
framework.
PSTNs establish a temporary end-to-end connection for the duration of a
call, including the dead time between speech, while IP telephony breaks up
telephone conversations into tiny digital packets which hop from space to space
along the network.
This makes it possible to carry far more voice and other digital
transmissions on the available bandwidth. | 