An international phone call could cost dollars a minute when deltathree started sending calls over the internet for far less. It was one of the first companies to try. RSL Communications controlled deltathree when it filed to go public in late 1999. Internet telephony was still crackly and new. The long distance carriers were only starting to worry about it.

Voice as Data Packets

deltathree bet that voice would become just another kind of internet traffic. It turned calls into data packets and routed them over a network it built for the job, so it did not rely only on the public internet. That let it undercut traditional carriers, especially on international routes. It sold to consumers through a product that let a PC call a phone. It also sold cheap capacity to other carriers and businesses.

Undercut by Skype

deltathree priced at $15 a share in November 1999. Internet calling did take off, but prices fell to almost nothing, and bigger players such as Skype changed the market. deltathree shrank over the next decade. In 2009 D4 Holdings, an investment fund linked to the owners of ACN, bought a controlling stake. By then deltathree was a small company carrying heavy losses.

Cover: Water Carriers on the Nile, John Singer Sargent. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for water carriers on the Nile (traffic flowing down a river delta).