IDT Corp, the former International Discount Telecommunications, claims to have the first Internet phone system that enables computer users to make calls to standard telephones via the Internet – and in response to the wave of product announcements from Internet phone rivals, it is releasing its full commercial version of Net2Phone three months ahead of its original plan. The original business and still its mainstay is its callback business, which enables people routinely gouged by state monopoly phone companies to make their overseas calls to be made at US-level tariffs, and Net2Phone enables people to place calls from anywhere in the world via the Internet to any ordinary telephone around the world at rates up to 95% below traditional international long distance rates. Calls originating from any country in the world and terminating in the US will be billed at $0.10 cents a minute off-peak, $0.15 cents a minute at other times. Calls to international locations will cost $0.05 above IDT’s cost for connecting the call, so that Net2Phone calls from the US to Europe, for instance, would cost about $0.18 cents a minute – 60% less than the average rates now charged by major US long distance carriers, the company says. Net2Phone is based on proprietary, patent-pending software developed in-house by the company that enables personal computer users to place calls directly to standard telephone equipment on the receiving end of the call, taking advantage of the fact that IDT owns its own telecommunic ations switching equipment: Net2Phone software enables Internet users from anywhere in the world to dial into the IDT Web site and be connected to its telephone network.
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