Earthlink discusses voice over IP (2Q05 ELNK conf call quotes)

Earthlink (ticker: ELNK) CEO Gary Betty discussed his company's voice over IP services on its Q2 conference call. Extracts:

A continuation of our voice strategy, EarthLink announced a joint marketing trial with Covad to deliver an innovative bundle of phone and high-speed Internet services. This offering combines the last mile of traditional telephone copper wiring with the advanced features of VoIP by taking advantage of the next-generation DSLAM technology.

This generation technology will also allow to us offer DSL-2+, that's a higher speed broadband access with speeds of 6 to 10 megabits per second depending on the customer's distance from the central office. The trial is expected to start in the fourth quarter in Dallas, Texas, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, and Seattle, Washington.

In the second quarter, EarthLink also launched a beta version of our latest free online calling program that we're now calling VLING. This exciting new service lets consumers use a PC to make calls and send instant text messages to anyone else using VLING for free and includes an innovative, easy to use interface.

Additionally for a fee, customers can also use this service to terminate calls to the public switch telephone network.

(Quotes are from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)

Quick comment (digression?): I'm testing three cheap PC headsets for use with the voice chat
feature of Skype and AIM. (Note, Earthlink: they're free.) They are:

• Plantronics Audio 90 Multimedia Stereo PC Headset
• Sony DR-220DP PC Headset
• Logitech Extreme PC Gaming Headset

All cost below $20. Would be interested to hear readers' views of which PC peripherals are most useful for VoiP chat.

Not subscribed to The Internet Stock Blog? You can get updated headlines for free by adding The Internet Stock Blog to your My Yahoo page. Just log into your My Yahoo
page, then go to The Internet Stock Blog and click on the "+ My Yahoo"
button on the top right of your screen. You can do the same for other sites, such as The China Stock Blog, ETF Investor, Radical Guides and Seeking Alpha.