Ford revs up Internet phones
Auto giant Ford Motor plans to install 50,000 VoIP phones at 110 offices in Michigan, in one of the largest installations of the technology to date by any corporation, SBC Communications said Tuesday.
The automobile manufacturer has tapped SBC, the nation's second-largest telephone company, to provide the phones and the engineering help to install the gear, and to manage the service, according to SBC. The carrier will use Internet phones from Cisco Systems.
Because of its size and scope, the Ford-SBC contract, which reportedly is worth $100 million, is a watershed moment for the technology known as VoIP, or voice over Internet Protocol, which converts phone calls into data packets that travel over the Internet.