] Sprint Corp., which sells local telephone services in 18
] states, has started converting its local-phone network to
] a technology that increases capacity and allows the
] company to sell new services. Sprint will buy
] packet-switching equipment from Nortel Networks Corp. to
] upgrade the network. Under a $1.1 billion agreement with
] Nortel in 2001, Sprint planned to complete the conversion
] in eight years. Now the transition may take 13 years,
] said Michael Fuller, president of Sprint's local
] division. While traditional phone calls travel over
] dedicated circuits that remain open for the duration of a
] conversation, packet-based technology breaks voice and
] data traffic into digital pieces that are sent separately
] and reassembled upon arrival.

I wonder if this is VoIP or something else...

Sprint starts packet shift