Excite partners with IDT: Web users get IP telephony download

International visitors to Excite's portal Web will have the chance to download setup software for global carrier IDT's Net2Phone telephony product.

Under a recently announced two-year agreement, local Excite sites in Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom will integrate a "Download Net2Phone" icon starting in October. A customer with a sound-equipped PC clicks the button to download the necessary software, set up a Net2Phone subscription, prepay by credit card and dial out to any phone.

Excite will be the first portal in these markets to make low-cost Internet protocol telephony so readily available, said Evan Rudowski, the company's director of European operations.

The Excite offering will include a click-to-dial function and personal directory pages. Users with Net2Phone on their PCs can look up a telephone number and initiate the call without leaving Excite.

Excite is the first or second most visited portal in each of these national markets, said Jonathan Reich, IDT's senior vice president for business development. "The market is substantial," he said. "Multimedia computers are the standard outside the U.S., and we're seeing exponential growth in non-domestic Internet use."Worldwide viewership for Excite portals is 44 million page views a day, including 7.5 million from the Excite on-line network, Rudowski said. The company does not break out European results.

IDT will transport the calls over its own DS-3 (44.7 Mb/s) Tier 1 IP network.