On Mon, 22 Jul 1996, jim bell wrote:
If these people REALLY wanted to promote the use of Internet telephoning, what they'd do is implement a system where an Internet ISP could be "called" over the Internet by a person wanting to place an LD telephone call to that area, and (presumably using A/D and D/A techniques) rather than generating and receiving modem tones, woudl generate and transmit the audio over the telephone line. That way, the target of the call would simply need to pick up the telephone and talk, as he would ordinarily do: He wouldn't even need a computer. He might not even know the call was going over the Internet.
...see IDT's Net2Phone product, at http://www.net2phone.com/; it does what you describe. Two notes: (1) I haven't used it yet; (2: disclosure) I'm now employed by IDT, though in a different area. - Lee