AT&T, Zoom promote Net phone offerings
AT&T Corp. yesterday began offering its new, reduced-price ''voice over Internet protocol" service in several new Eastern Massachusetts markets, even as a Boston telecommunications company, Zoom Technologies Inc., rolled out its own plans for selling a no-monthly-fee VOIP calling plan.
Underscoring the growing momentum behind VOIP plans, AT&T expanded its $35-a-month CallVantage unlimited calling plan from metropolitan Boston into several nearby markets, including Attleboro, Brockton, Fall River, Fitchburg, Leominster, Lowell, Lawrence, New Bedford, and Worcester.
The expanded area where CallVantage is being marketed also includes big parts of Connecticut, southern New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, but not Cape Cod or Maine.
The AT&T service requires customers to have a high-speed Internet connection from another carrier such as Comcast Corp. or Verizon Communications Inc. CallVantage customers can plug a standard phone into their computer modem and use it to make unlimited calls throughout the United States -- and deeply discounted calls to international numbers. Calls sound virtually the same but move across AT&T's network and other phone lines in the same digital form as e-mails and Web pages. AT&T said it will offer service for $20 for the first six months until Sept. 1.
The broadband adapter unit costs $10.
With the new rollout of CallVantage in New England and other markets, AT&T is now selling the VOIP plan in 100 markets in 29 states. ''We believe we're now reaching the majority of markets that we want to be in," based on targeting markets with significant numbers of households with broadband Net connections, said Cathy Martine, AT&T's senior vice president for Internet telephony consumer marketing.
Another new VOIP option for consumers is arriving this week. Zoom, which sells modems, and has been selling other consumer telecom gear since 1977, is getting into providing phone service itself through a new VOIP plan called ''Global Village."
Zoom is selling a new $99 telephone digital subscriber line modem that supports VOIP calling. The unit works with any standard phone. Along with the device, purchasers can get a CallVantage-style unlimited monthly calling plan for the US as well as Canada for $28 a month, which is $2 less than industry leader Vonage Holdings Corp.
But Zoom is also one of the first US companies to offer VOIP calls with no monthly minimum fee, in Zoom's case for 2.9 cents a minute. Subscribers are charged by credit card whenever their balance gets to $30, or less if they have gone several months without reaching $30.
Zoom founder and president Frank B. Manning said, ''Vonage wants you to think of them as your primary phone service, but we're really providing you a second phone line. Our style is very freedom-oriented, and we wanted to make the easiest-to-use product."
Because it connects to DSL plans that also have a standard phone line, the Zoom device will let subscribers go back and forth between using VOIP or the normal Bell System phone network, which ensures people keep phone service in case of a power failure and have an accurate address transmitted to public safety officials if they call 911. By pressing the pound sign before dialing a number, the call goes over the GlobalVillage network, but without the pound sign the calls goes over regular phone lines. Colorado-based Level 3 Communications Inc. is the main wholesale provider of VOIP service for GlobalVillage, Manning said.
To some extent, Manning acknowledged, the low-price VOIP service is a way for Zoom to promote sales of the $99 modem unit, which also includes a security ''firewall" and router for linking several computers to the DSL connection. DSL customers of Verizon or other carriers can replace their current modems with the Zoom X5v device without affecting their broadband service.
A similar device that plugs into cable modems offered by companies such as Comcast Corp. and RCN Corp., with the same monthly or no-minimum VOIP calling plans, will be offered by September, Manning said.
Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com. 