Life after the Internet: Despite competition from the Internet, carriers are finding a niche market for toll-free digital service

When first announced several years ago, toll-free digital service appeared to be the penny-pinching computer enthusiast's dream. Users, particularly corporate users with digital connections, could send and receive voice, video or data by dialing a single number--and charges would go to the call recipient.

Although it has been somewhat eclipsed by the Internet, which now offers similar services, toll-free digital service is now carving out a niche for itself by offering a higher level of customization and security.

The offerings

The "Big Three" long-distance carriers--AT&T, MCI and Sprint--offer toll-free digital service. Because the service is backward-compatible with toll-free voice, catalog companies and other marketing-savvy firms can use it to offer customers a choice of traditional voice-based toll-free service or on-line displays of merchandise and support materials. All three carriers' services enable corporate accounts to let authorized users dial in to local area networks, videoconferences and the Internet while reversing the charges (Figure 1).

"This is a really cool service offering," says Brett Azuma, director and principal telecom analyst at Dataquest. He says the key to the service offering is the ability to have one identity, or one number, that handles video, data or voice. "Some people find that very attractive," he says.

At least one of the carriers, AT&T, allows toll-free voice customers to convert their existing numbers to toll-free digital service to provide a smooth transition path.Customers can gain access to AT&T's toll-free multimedia service through POTS for voice and low-speed data through digital switched access at 56 kb/s for areas where basic rate ISDN is not available, and for top-level services, through ISDN. When ISDN is used, the D-channel signaling capability can provide enhanced call setup features.

Through AT&T's toll-free multimedia service, customers pay for modem and voice calls at their regular toll-free rates, while the company charges about 20¢ per minute for switched 56 kb/s or clear channel 64 kb/s calls.

"The service was brought to market to help migrate applications of the voice 800 [number] world into multimedia," says Cynthia Bell Collins, AT&T's product manager for toll-free multimedia.

Essential to toll-free digital service offerings is using ISDN--which uses a setup field within the data--within the carrier network.

"The field is called a bearer capability field," Collins explains. "It's an ISDN field in the setup message, and if that field is 0, it means it's a voice call. If it's 56 or 64, it means it's a request for a digital call." AT&T actually digitized its whole toll-free system.

The underlying ISDN portion of an interexchange carrier's network can enable it to add bandwidth to a toll-free digital call as needed. Connections--and charges--are limited to the amount of bandwidth needed for the duration of the call.

For digital toll-free service to work, local exchange carriers must first groom the call to hand it off, which took some missionary work, says Collins. "We did a change with the local companies with their switches in their originating logic stream, so they looked at this field before they automatically fed a [toll-free] number to voice standards," she says.

MCI calls its service MCI 800 Digital Service, and traffic traverses a special subnetwork within the MCI switched networks that supports clear channel switched data traffic. Voice calls are handled across the common access and network facilities used for all switched voice traffic.

Sprint calls its toll-free digital offering Sprint Premiere. Users can access Sprint's switched digital service mainly through ISDN facilities or LEC digital access facilities, a company spokesman says.

The Internet challenge

The shadow of the Internet lurks over all, however. Daniel Briere, president of TeleChoice, points out that toll-free digital service was introduced with a lot of fanfare. However, "two years ago, people started waking up to the reality of the Internet. More than 70% of the applications that were originally slated for [toll-free] digital are probably being subsumed by the Internet."

One of the realities is that toll-free digital is dependent on the originating side's digital service, and while that may attract corporate users, few residential users have such capability.

Toll-free digital service continues to be popular for "niche-specific" applications, however. Videoconferencing is one, mainly because it can be done more effectively than on the Internet.

The same is true for some telecommuting applications. Toll-free digital service also may be preferable to the Internet for applications that require a higher level of security and ease-of-use.

Everyone knows how to dial a toll-free number, and toll-free numbers are ubiquitous. Sprint, for instance, offers its digital toll-free service in at least 22 countries and is constantly adding more countries to its list.

Some companies may appreciate the corporate identity of a specific toll-free number. Toll-free digital service also provides accounting advantages because the reverse-billed services are easily allocated to given projects.

Although toll-free digital is unlikely to ever have the appeal of conventional toll-free service, TeleChoice's Briere adds that there are plenty of applications that can justify putting in toll-free digital services.

Intel uses toll-free digital service to demonstrate its software and equipment at the 600 trade shows it attends each year. It also uses toll-free digital to automatically register new software.

An airplane manufacturer uses toll-free digital service to allow repair crews in remote hangers to dial into the firm's mainframe to download methods and procedural documents as well as manuals.

A publishing company provides customers with a PC and appropriate software, enabling each customer to dial in on a toll-free number and have calls routed to a customized database of documents or pictures.

Key to the service is automatic number identification, which associates a customer identification number with a unique database. Materials are automatically uploaded to the customer for review and editing. The customer then calls the same number to send the edited materials back to the proper files.

As concerns about Internet congestion continue to abound, and as flat-rate monthly Internet pricing becomes increasingly untenable, toll-free digital service may become an attractive alternative for companies that want to offer customers cost-effective, easy and secure access to voice, video and data communications.