Subject: PSTN integration of internet telephony

From: George Michaelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 14:35:42 +1000

Apart from the H320/H261 stuff which would be a more restricted form
of interconnect, is anybody in the MBONE community in a position to
talk about how products are emerging which meet regulatory and other
approval to connect to the PSTN both ways?

	signalling systems conformance
	QDU levels
	billing issues
	CLI

We're getting a dribble of "almost news" stories  on paper and radio
about the various "call USA by internet" ideas people float. As far
as I can tell 99% of these are either illegal, or else very restricted
use of PC-to-PC and in no sense re-injecting calls into the PSTN in
either country. However with acceptable compression levels on long-distance
lines now better than 4:1 and with the quality of audio-in-IP one would
expect that some level of integration is on the drawing board, somewhere
in a lab.

Anybody able to come clean?

-George