THE WEB Internet phones cut costs connecting more and more

Internet-based calling plans threaten local phone companies.
WASHINGTON POST
In November, Andy Abramson of San Diego took his new Internet phone on a two-week business trip to Europe. He spent 18 hours calling friends and clients in Canada, Italy, France and the United States, an international dialing spree that would normally have set him back hundreds of dollars.
But all that talking cost him just $13. For William Ashton, who supervises the municipal phone system for Herndon, Va., the town's new Internet phone network has made work a lot easier.
Ashton used to dread requests to move a phone or add a line. The process took several days, including a visit by an outside contractor who spent hours rearranging telephone wires in a closet and cost $400 or more. "I was in the business of saying no," Ashton said.
Since last year when the new system was installed, Ashton has managed the entire phone network from his desktop computer. He can add lines with the click of a mouse. When town employees move to a new office, they unplug their phones and carry them to their new desks. Their phone calls follow automatically.
Abramson and the town of Herndon aren't just saving money; they're at the cutting edge of the biggest change in telephone technology since government-sanctioned monopolies knitted the nation together decades ago with copper wire.
Still bugs in it
The Internet calling experience is still clunky. Sound quality can be spotty, and it doesn't work if the high-speed Internet connection is down. But early adopters of the technology are willing to put up with a few glitches in exchange for big savings and the satisfaction of thumbing their noses at the nation's dominant regional telephone companies.
Internet phone service is emerging as a powerful alternative just as the consolidation appears to be building steam.
Most of the new firms don't own wires or telecommunications networks, just software that translates the sound of a voice into bits of data that zip over the Internet much like e-mails or instant messages. The companies offer savings but require users to install software and hardware on their own.
Do-it-yourself telephone service may still be too much trouble for most consumers, but the Internet-based technology is being adopted by bigger phone companies, including AT & amp;T Corp., which is rolling out a similar service, CallVantage, nationwide.
Cable companies
A more significant threat to the dominant local phone companies could come from cable television companies that plan to use the same technology to offer phone service to their 70 million subscribers.
Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems Inc. have begun to roll out phone service in some markets, creating a powerful triple threat for consumers who want to buy their cable television, high-speed Internet and telephone from a single company. Unlike the Internet start-ups and AT & amp;T, the cable companies are offering phone service that looks and feels more like traditional phone service, with installation and maintenance performed by trained technicians.
Cable companies also promise superior quality because calls never go out on the public Internet. Instead, they travel over the cable companies' private data networks until they are handed off to other telecommunications companies.
Telecommunications companies are lobbying the federal government to allow Internet voice services to remain unregulated, but a tangle of issues complicate a move from traditional telephone technology to Internet-based service. The Justice Department worries that it won't be able to monitor Internet telephone calls in the same way it can tap traditional voice calls. There are ongoing concerns about linking Internet-based phones with the emergency 911 system. And regulators worry that a move to Internet phones will upset a complex system of subsidies that ensures that rural and low-income citizens have telephone service.