Qwest Communications Inc. announced
today the commercial availability of its phone-to-phone Internet Telephony
service called Q.talk.
For 7.5 cents per minute, Qwest reports that customers will be able to
place a long-distance, state-to-state call over an IP network by calling a
local number that accesses the Qwest IP network. Once connected to the
network, users enter their password and then dial the long distance number.
The service is rolling out in nine cities, including Anaheim, Los Angeles,
Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose, CA; Salt Lake City, UT;
Denver, CO; and Kansas City, MO. The company plans to extend the service to
more than 25 additional cities by the end of 1998.
Qwest is claiming that Q.talk transmits calls at the same quality as standard
telephone services. A traditional phone call contains the bandwidth of 64
kbps. Most IP telephony services compress the voice data to 13 kpbs for
better transmission speeds. This tends to reduce the quality of the call.
Q.talk transmits the call at 64 kpbs.
“The advancement of Internet telephony is today being realized on the Qwest
Macro Capacity fiber network,” said Joseph P. Nacchio, president and CEO of
Qwest. “We welcome our new customers and hope they enjoy the savings of
Q.talk with all of their family and friends.”
