Fun_People Archive
20 Mar
Netscape builds in telephony.

Date: Wed, 20 Mar 96 15:29:57 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Netscape builds in telephony.

Forwarded-by: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
Forwarded-by: "Gregory S. Halbrook" <gsh@iti.org>
Forwarded-by: Dave Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>

COOLUM, AUSTRALIA, 1996 MAR 13 (NB) -- Netscape Communications within six
months will build voice software for making low-cost long distance calls
via the Internet into its Navigator program, the company's co-founder and
vice president of technology, Marc Andreesen, said at a technical forum
in Australia.

Andreesen told The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that telephone
companies could no longer justify the way they charge for voice telephony,
especially over long distance.

"We're going to build the voice telephony stuff into our Navigator
(software). We can get it out to 25 or 30 million desktops in the next
six months. That's a big enough critical mass for it to take off," he
said, according to the newspaper. He predicted phone companies would find
much of their equipment "rapidly becoming useless."

© 1996 Peter Langston