That includes an ISP, a new long-distance company, or even a multinational corporation that wants to run its own phone service. A real-time feature would enable you set up a conference call that ties in a cellular phone, a PC, a PictureTel videoconferencing unit, and a regular phone. While Internet phone software today calls for speaking into your PC's microphone, Soliant's approach would let you dial a two-number prefix on your existing phone to alert the switch that you're making an Internet call. Soliant's system, which would carry voice over the existing data network, would essentially pay for itself, Simensen explains. Instead of data riding on a voice network, voice rides for practically free over the data network.
Some analysts disagree with that premise, though.
While most data networks are 90 to 95 percent reliable, the phone network is 99.99999 percent reliable. Providing the reliability expected for voice entails reinforcing the infrastructure, which in turn increases the cost. Internet telephony exists in a relatively primitive form today. Early Internet telephony software had 240-millisecond delays. The company PBX would then route the call to the Internet.