(FORTUNE Magazine) – As the VP in charge of WorldNet, AT&T's Internet service provider, Tom Evslin kept hearing people rave about Internet telephony. Evslin loved the concept, but the execution--the staticky connections you often get when you try to use a computer and a microphone to talk to someone with a computer and a microphone at the other end of the Net--fell short.

Still, Evslin knew that Net telephony has the potential to be more than just scratchy calls between PCs: The Net might eventually become the transporter of all things digital--phone, fax, data, even television content. Placing all those streams on one network can be efficient and has already invited innovations like software that combines voice and data.

So in July, Evslin left his job at AT&T to start ITXC (which stands for Internet Telephony Exchange Carrier). Many Net startups hawk a gadget or produce content; ITXC will iron out the kinks behind the scenes by offering "transport and settlement" services to telcos and Internet service providers, providing bandwidth for Net calls and brokering routing and billing operations. ITXC will not build its own transport network (instead it will resell bandwidth), but it will run "settlement" computers that manage, track, and bill calls leaping on and off hundreds of networks in tens of countries. Eventually ITXC will depend solely on its settlement business.

Evslin's move is just the latest sign that IP telephony is a trend to take seriously. ITXC has big-name partners: AT&T and VocalTec, a maker of software for PC-to-PC phone calls. On Aug. 28, Deutsche Telekom announced that it would purchase over $30 million of VocalTec services and equipment and take a 21% stake in the company. Still, some observers think Evslin, 54, is jumping the gun. He disagrees. "All my career, I was too early about things," he muses, "until the Internet came along. These days, as soon as you predict things, they happen."