Bizwatch

The Internet is Calling
Britain's dominant phone company last week took a small step into telecoms' next big thing when it launched a service that carries phone calls via the Internet. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has long promised huge phone-bill savings, but has been delayed by poor quality. It's still "not quite as good" as standard land lines but "much better than mobiles," says BT executive Fergus Crockett.

In the U.S., AT&T and Time Warner Cable said they would start VoIP in 2004. BT users can now plug in an €85 adapter that's free until April, pay a little over

INDICATORS Crying Over Spilt Milk Italian dairy group Parmalat narrowly avoided defaulting on a €150 million bond, claiming it was unable to recover €500 million invested in an offshore fund. With debts of €6 billion, the firm's credit rating was earlier slashed twice in as many days. Account Closed France finally agreed on a $760 million settlement with U.S. prosecutors over the allegedly illegal purchase of failed insurer Executive Life by Crédit Lyonnais. Billionaire François Pinault — who made a big profit on the deal — will hand over $185 million but avoid prosecution. Unsafe Haven In an ongoing probe of the company's tax advice, U.S. regulators accused accounting firm KPMG of concealing its role in creating potentially abusive tax shelters.

€10 monthly for unlimited evening and weekend calls in the U.K., and around 6 cents per minute to 17 countries. They can even take the adapter abroad to make cheap calls. But there are limitations: they cannot call emergency numbers, as VoIP users lack the required numeric prefix linked to a geographical area, nor can they dial operators.

BT says cable users can save €155 a year; decent but not up to VoIP's potential. Eventually, BT, AT&T et al. could market local service in foreign countries. For consumers, that's worth phoning home about. — By Mark Halper

Southern France's Ray Of Hope
Citizens in the southern French town of Cadarache will be paying close attention to talks in Washington this week aimed at choosing the site for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world's biggest and most ambitious fusion-energy project. Wearing the E.U.'s colors, Cadarache is competing against a Japanese team to host a plant that will attempt to replicate the sun's own energy, fusing hydrogen into helium to exploit a limitless and clean source of power. But locals are not looking as far as the stars: the ITER would inject some €10 billion into the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region over its 30-year life span, generating more than €2 billion in secondary benefits and creating over 8,000 new jobs.

Not surprisingly, local government has offered to stump up €450 million of the project's €4.7 billion construction costs. For European leaders lobbying in force for the wavering U.S. vote this week, there's more to the ITER than bringing power to the people.

Disappearing Act
Japanese electronics giant Toshiba launched printer ink that becomes invisible when heated by a new desktop machine, allowing paper to be reused. (Don't try it with this magazine.)

The Bottom Line
	We view traffic congestion as a good sign. It is a healthy economic indicator
		DAN SENOR, spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, on the effects of an increase in vehicle imports to the country since the end of the war