A short announcement in the Internet newsgroup alt.winsock raises intriguing questions over how long regulatory controls on speech traffic can remain in place: the message in question announced the availability of Internet VoiceChat, Version 1.0, a Windows-based program that, its author says, enables users to conduct live, two-way voice conversations over the Internet, much like using a telephone or CB radio. Users require a Windows-compatible sound-board, with microphone, a direct Internet connection and a personal computer with at least an 80386 processor. The concept takes advantage of the difference in billing schemes between the public phone network and the Internet – the former uses usage-based billing, the latter favours flat-rate access. The result: essentially free telephone calls between Internet users. The software has a few other nice features, including an Answering Machine mode, and the ability to screen calls according to the caller’s IP address, and the application can run in the background, popping up when a call is received. There are a couple of unanswered questions: as we went to press we hadn’t tried the package, so it is not clear how well the software copes with the bursty, non-isochronous nature of the Internet. There is also the question of how much traffic the system will generate; your system administrator will not be too pleased if his or her network is clogged up with users’ phone calls.
