Ma Bell's Kids Will Live on the Net; We're seeing the phone call turn into just another Internet tool, like e-mail or instant messaging.

Byline: Steven Levy

Have telephone companies gone off the hook? In the last few weeks, AT&T has been gobbled by SBC and MCI snapped up by Verizon. It's like some toddler upchucked his alphabet soup. Part of this ferment comes from the telco struggle to deal with new technologies, but the most disruptive change of all--voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), pronounced by geeks as "v-oy -p"--is only beginning to make its mark. "Telephone service used to be based on a huge infrastructure of high-priced equipment," says Peter Sisson, a former Bell Labs researcher turned entrepreneur. "And now it's just software."

Think about that. All those costly switching…