Qwest today announced the first of a phased deployment of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services to customers in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. Qwest is the first major telecommunications provider to offer Voice over IP services to residential customers.

"The future of voice communications will be based on the Internet, and Qwest is excited to lead the way for customers," said Richard C. Notebaert, Qwest chairman and CEO. "Voice over IP allows us to offer customers greater features, functionality and convenience while also saving them money on their telephone services. Offering voice over the Internet makes good sense for our customers and for Qwest."

Qwest's unique blend of local and long-haul network assets make VoIP a natural evolution because the company can offer the "last mile" broadband connection to customers' homes through DSL and then transport the long-haul traffic onto its nationwide data and IP network.

With VoIP, customers can enjoy new features and:

• Go to a Web site and view a call log of missed, incoming or outgoing calls as well as "click-to-dial"
• Add personal contacts and place them in groups for later "smart" call forwarding
• Specify call forwarding locations for different groups of callers during designated times and days of the week
• View and listen to voice mail messages online (will be available in a subsequent phase)

"To date residential VoIP services have been limited and have generally been delivered by a combination of specialty carriers and cable MSOs," said Tom Valovic, Program Director for IP Telephony at IDC. "With this announcement, Qwest becomes the first RBOC to enter this emerging market, a significant milestone in the rapidly advancing development of VoIP services. As Qwest increases the scope of this deployment, availability of the new services will lend major momentum to the progress of VoIP as a next-generation solution."

How Voice over IP Works

Voice over IP gives customers the ability to use a high-speed data connection to make voice calls to others over the Internet or a private network rather than over the Public Switched Telephone Network.

Following is a description of the Voice over IP call process:

1. Calls are made using a VoIP phone or a wireline phone that is connected to a VoIP adaptor device
2. The VoIP phone or VoIP adaptor is connected to a DSL or cable modem at the customer's home
3. For transmission, the conversation is broken down into smaller units called packets which are sent across the Internet
4. The Qwest VoIP network provides the features selected by the customer (such as call forwarding) and routes the call appropriately
5. At the receiving end, the packets are reassembled in the appropriate order and converted back to an analog signal

Qwest plans to provide Voice over IP services to additional residential and small business customers as well as to medium and enterprise business customers during the first half of 2004.