AT&T launches residential VoIP, gets sued by Vonage

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—AT&T announced the launch of its residential voice service, CallVantage, this week at the VON Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., and was promptly hit with a lawsuit from Internet telephony provider Vonage for choosing a product name too similar to its corporate brand.

Despite the immediate controversy, the VoIP community saw the AT&T announcement as a huge step forward in IP-based communications. AT&T chose to launch its service in SBC’s backyard by offering broadband phone service to residents in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston, Texas. AT&T also announced service in parts of New Jersey.

CallVantage will provide unlimited calling and advanced telephony features for $39.99 per month. Early adopters who sign up for VoIP service by the end of May can take advantage of AT&T’s six-month introductory offer of $19.99 per month. Customer also can get a free month of service for referrals.

The carrier said it would expand the service to 100 major markets by the end of the year and expects to have 1 million customers by the end of 2005.

"This service is predicated on our application aware network," said Cathy Martine, senior vice president of Internet Telephony and consumer product marketing at AT&T. "And it’s more than just a matter of price. This offering is about features."

In addition to traditional calling features such as call waiting, three-way calling and call forwarding—which AT&T will offer free—the company will offer features such as: Call Logs, which track incoming and outgoing calls and uses a click-to-dial feature; Do Not Disturb, which lets customers block calls while allowing emergency calls through; Personal Conferencing for up to 10 callers; Locate Me, which rotates to up to five devices or rings them all at once; and Voicemail with eFeatures, which allows customers to hear their messages from any phone or PC.

The service will work over both cable and DSL using a plug-in telephone adapter and a regular phone. It can be accessed from any broadband connection using the adapter.

Offering residential VoIP won’t cause AT&T to back away from its competitive stance on UNE-P. The company said in a statement that VoIP is no substitute for the pro-competitive local phone policies, which should continue to be enforced.

Citing the maturation of standards as one element now in place that enables the launch of this service and declaring her company’s network ready for prime time, Martine did say that the industry still needs to be cautious about regulating VoIP. "We don’t want competition to be stifled too soon because of over-regulation," she said.

The official entry into residential VoIP comes a week after AT&T announced the accelerated expansion of its business VoIP portfolio. AT&T added Alcatel, Nortel Networks and Siemens to the list of equipment companies with which it can interoperate, which included Avaya and Cisco. The carrier also said it would add an IP local service option to its managed services offering and committed to developing three VoIP applications: IP Centrex, call center and teleworker solutions.

Show promoter Jeff Pulver, CEO of pulver.com called the announcement and others like it this week from Level 3 and Covad a tipping point for the industry. "It doesn’t mean we are out of the early adopter phase of the technology, but it is important that the big boys have announced their intent to play," Pulver said. "We still have to cross the chasm. Those who think we have already crossed are delusional."