Firm offers phone service over the Internet

Monday, Dec. 14, 1998 | 11:40 a.m.

An Englewood, Colo., company is offering Las Vegans long-distance telephone service using Internet technology.

Local telecommunications and Internet experts say "IP telephony" offered by ICG Communications Inc. is the first Internet protocol long-distance service available in Las Vegas.

ICG Netcom is the brand name for ICG's products and services.

IP telephony gives callers access to ICG Netcom's private network with a local phone number. Voice transmissions are digitized into packets, transmitted like an e-mail message, unscrambled on the receiving end and reconstructed as a local voice call there. The system allows callers to avoid long-distance line charges.

The cost is competitive with the lowest long-distance rates -- 5.9 cents or 8.9 cents a minute at any time of day, any day, on interstate or intrastate calls.

Critics say the quality of IP telephony calls is not as high as over standard voice transmission lines, but a company representative disputes that.

"I think it's as good as any phone line, and it's getting even better," said Lance Thomas of ICG Netcom.

The roll-out of the Las Vegas service coincided with the company's expansion from 31 to 101 cities nationwide. By the end of the year, the company plans to expand again to 166 cities, which would provide coverage to about 90 percent of the U.S. population. The company plans international calling in the future.

In Nevada, ICG Netcom also offers the service in Reno, Sparks, Carson City and Sun Valley.

Calls within the ICG network of cities are the ones that cost 5.9 cents a minute while calls outside the network are 8.9 cents.

In order to use the service, customers must have e-mail and a credit card. After signing up and supplying an e-mail address and a credit-card number for billing, customers use the service by calling a local access number for a dial tone.

Once the tone is accessed, callers dial the area code and number for their calls. Callers are e-mailed information about their charges and the billing goes on the credit card.

Thomas said his company's biggest competitors are the "call-around" long-distance services in which callers use an access number instead of a long-distance company. Since customers don't have to give up their long-distance providers to use ICG's service, they can use the best rate when they call, Thomas said.