Frederick company aims to stop Net spam before it starts

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Jun 30, 2004 by Robyn Lamb

Phone calls over the Internet are cheaper than those made using a land line, a fact that telemarketers may learn to exploit to reach potential customers through their computers.

With Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, telemarketing calls could become as prevalent as e-mail spam. Qovia Inc., a Frederick- based VoIP management company, is designing software that would block the so-called SPIT (spam over Internet telephony) calls.

As VoIP takes off, it is very obvious we're going to see spam over the Internet take off in critical mass, said Pierce Reid, vice president of marketing for Qovia. We are trying to stop it before it begins.

In VoIP, a conversation is converted to packets of data that flit over the Internet or private networks until they are reassembled and converted to sound on the other end of the call.

Because it uses technology similar to e-mail, VoIP is vulnerable to the same spam threat.

Telemarketers could potentially send thousands of voice messages simultaneously into callers' VoIP voice mailboxes, overloading corporate mailboxes with junk voice mail.

The fact that the calls stream over the IP voice networks means they are not covered by the do -not -call list.

Unlike e-mail spam blockers which analyze content, Qovia's patent- pending technology uses algorithms to recognize certain patterns in calls that are associated with sales calls, such as location and timing - for example, many calls coming in simultaneously.

VoIP spam is not a problem - yet - because VoIP use is not widespread. As the technology becomes more widely adopted, the issue of spam could become critical.

The VoIP market is expected to rise to $15.1 billion by 2007 from $3.3 billion in 2003, according to technology research firm IDC.

VoIP carriers cannot afford to let the problem of spam get ahead of their ability to deal with it, as Internet providers have done, said Thomas Nolle, president of technology consultancy CIMI Corp., in published reports.

It sounds like they [Qovia] are being proactive. Somebody came up with this for e-mail, said Norm Bogen, director of networking for research firm In-StatMDR. And if someone told me they could solve my spam problems, I would buy it. There's a market, I just don't know how effective the technology is.

Qovia plans to incorporate the blocking software into a security module that will be available as part of the company's already marketed VoIP Monitoring and Management System later this year.

In April, the 2-year-old company obtained $10.6 million in its second round of financing.