AT&T Sends VoIP Service Home

AT&T is aggressively expanding its voice over Internet protocol services with a new focus on consumers, the company said Thursday.

While the carrier has offered VoIP services to some business customers since 1997, AT&T said that it will expand its VoIP business services worldwide and begin offering new services to U.S. consumers next year.

The VoIP push is meant to target the growing number of broadband Internet users who are looking to simplify their voice and data communications by running them over one network, AT&T said.

The company added that it has had a fourfold increase in business VoIP customers this year alone, and recent trials have shown a growing demand in the consumer market as well.

AT&T said that it will start rolling out consumer VoIP services in select U.S. cities in the first quarter of 2004. Additionally, it is expanding its West Coast VoIP capabilities with an eye at targeting consumers in the top 100 U.S. markets.

The new services will offer consumers advanced call-management capabilities and Web-based features, the company said.

Crowded Market

The initiative comes on the heels of an announcement made earlier this month by Time Warner Cable, a unit of Time Warner, that it is partnering with MCI and Sprint to further roll out its VoIP offerings in the U.S.

A number of operators, including SBC Communications and Verizon Communications, have been busily introducing VoIP services in an effort to stave off rivals that are offering similar services without having to lay down new networks.

Vonage Holdings, for example, offers residential broadband phone service and VoIP services for small firms. Vonage was founded in January 2001 and now claims to have over 75,000 active lines, completing 3 million calls a week.

While multiple operators are quickly jumping into the VoIP market, interoperability and regulatory issues are still being debated. Regulators in some U.S. states, for example, are debating over whether the technology is a telecommunications service, subject to restrictions, or an unregulated Internet service.