VON (Voice on Net)

Company profile
In September 1996, Jeff Pulver, who had been active in the burgeoning exploration of voice transmission on the Internet, organized the very first Internet telephony conference at the Puck building in New York City. Attendees included VocalTec, whose InternetPhone product marked the onset of the IP (Internet Protocol) Telephony revolution, as well as Clarent (then known as Netiphone), iBasis (then known as ChipChat) and Deltathree. At the time, Jeff was also involved in a project called Free World Dialup, which sought to make long-distance calls free. It used the Internet phone technology to connect the equivalent of two local calls. Little did he realize what was to come. In spring 1997, the first Voice On the Net(sm) (VON) Conference was held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco.
