[Asterisk-Users] SingTel ready to break into web telephony

[Dean Collins]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/05/1081017104255.html     SingTel ready to break into web telephony April 6, 2004 Singapore Telecommunications is teaming up with US internet phone start-up SIPphone to offer low cost, and in some cases free, phone services over the web. The deal, expected to be announced today, will allow SIPphone - started by MP3.com founder Michael Robertson - to route calls anywhere in the world over SingTel's global phone network. SingTel and SIPphone, based in San Diego, initially will market the service in Asia and try to strike deals with other regional internet service providers to sell packages of phone services. But the SingTel-SIPphone deal's reach will be global: it will allow anyone using special SIPphone gear, such as one of the company's phones or adaptors, to use a new type of SingTel calling card to place calls cheaply from anywhere, to anywhere. Customers could buy the calling cards online, not just in Asia, when the new service starts later this month, said Richard Tan, SingTel's vice-president of international carrier services. SingTel owns Optus and has sizeable stakes in telecom firms in other countries including India, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. Until SIPphone linked up with SingTel, SIPphone users could use the service only by calling other people with one of the company's phones or adaptors, which plug into a high-speed internet outlet. Those calls are free, not counting the cost of the SIPphone hardware. SIP stands for session initiation protocol, the internet standard the technology uses. The partnership is another sign of the power of "voice over internet protocol", or VOIP, technology, which is disrupting the business models of major phone companies and threatening to slash their profits. The technology transforms a voice on the phone into digital packets, which then travel over the web and are reassembled at their destination. Because they are carried over the internet, and not a traditional phone line, calls are either free or heavily discounted because they avoid many regulatory fees. By using VOIP, "the difference between local and long-distance [calling] evaporates", said Mr Robertson.