Can packet telephony boost local competition?(Voice 2000)(Convergence - How Does Your Garden Grow?)(includes related article on cable telephony)

Business Communications Review, July, 1999 by Krapf, Eric

A new set of vendors wants to packetize the last mile, but leave the PSTN's backbone circuit-switched. You can say a lot things about the ILECs - the incumbent local exchange carriers - and many people have. But there's one point on which everyone agrees: They know how to deliver voice service in the local loop - after all, they've been doing it for most of the past 100 years.

And while eventually, what we call the "public network" will carry IP packets for all types of traffic, voice included, the transformation of the local loop has always been seen as the last step in that migration. Until now. Within the past few months, a group of startups has begun promoting the idea that the last mile should be the first stage in the public switched...

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