VOIP Why Change?



Reducing your telephone bill is the most influencing factor of VoIP for new users. Understanding the technology involved can make all the difference to how you install and use the system to your own benefit. VoIP can turn a standard Internet connection into a way to place free phone calls. The practical upshot of this is that by using some of the free VoIP software that is available to make Internet phone calls, you are bypassing the phone company (and its charges) entirely.

According to a recent study only 12 percent of the people surveyed were familiar with the concept of VoIP. Of those that knew it related to some type of phone service, even fewer understood how it actually worked.

Lower telephone bills are only one aspect of the advantages of VoIP when it comes to telecommunication systems. Traditional telephone systems are typically difficult to manage and support. They require their own communication lines, custom hardware, and usually a special support team. Just adding or removing a single user could cost hundreds of dollars. Not to mention the cost of adding additional extensions.

At one time there was no choice because it was an essential and there was no alternative but to pay the prices quoted by the telephone companies. But now there is choice, imagine a local phone number that followed you anywhere. Take a VoIP phone on the road, and you can place or receive calls from almost anywhere as if you were sitting at home or in the office. Since your phone number is mobile you can make "local" calls back home or call around the globe without worrying about cell phone roaming or hotel surcharges your phone messages can be forwarded to your notebook as e-mail attachments. It is possible to archive both phone messages and conversations and keep them as files on your computer. Without the surcharges of the telephone company

Most VoIP companies provide the features that normal phone companies charge extra for when they are added to your service plan. VoIP includes:

?Caller ID

?Call waiting

?Call transfer

?Repeat dial

?Return call

?Three-way calling

There are also advanced call-filtering options available from some carriers. These features use caller ID information to allow you make a choice about how calls from a particular number are handled. You can:

?Forward the call to a particular number

?Send the call directly to voicemail

?Give the caller a busy signal

?Play a "not-in-service" message

?Send the caller to a funny rejection hotline

With many VoIP services, you can also check voicemail via the Web or attach messages to an e-mail that is sent to your computer or handheld. Not all VoIP services offer all of the features above. Prices and services vary, so if you're interested, it's best to do a little shopping.

VoIP allows you to make telephone calls using an Internet connection instead of using a regular analogue phone line.With VoIP, you can make a call from anywhere you have broadband connectivity. Since the IP phones or ATAs broadcast their info over the Internet, the provider can administer them anywhere there is a connection. So business travellers can take their phones or ATAs with them on trips and always have access to their home phone. Another alternative is the soft phone. It is client software that loads the VoIP service onto your desktop or laptop. The Vonage soft phone has an interface on your screen that looks like a traditional telephone. As long as you have a headset/microphone, you can place calls from your laptop anywhere in the broadband-connected world.

Some services using VoIP may allow you to call only other people using the same service, but other services will allow you to call anyone who has a telephone number ? including local, long distance, mobile, and international numbers

How it Works

VoIP is a collection of digitally encrypted voice transmissions that are carried over a network based on a single common language, or protocol ? in this case, the Internet Protocol TCP/IP. VoIP converts the voice signal from your telephone into a digital signal that travels over the Internet and is then converted back at the other end, so you can speak to anyone with a regular phone number. When placing a VoIP call using a phone with an adapter, you'll hear a dial tone and dial just as you always have. VoIP may also allow you to make a call directly from a computer using a conventional telephone or a microphone.

VoIP works as a peer-to-peer application, entailing handshaking and direct media exchange between two IP devices. To call someone, the user dials the telephone number, the handset translates that number into IP address format (e.g., 123.456.11.22), and the device sends encrypted data packets whose payloads contain messages conforming to a particular call-set up protocol between the two devices. They then establish a common connection for voice exchange. Their device rings, they pick up, and media packets flow in both directions.

To better understand how VoIP works, it's helpful to compare it to how conventional phone calls operate. When you place a "regular" phone call using the Public Switched Telephone Network or PSTN (also known as POTS, for Plain Old Telephone Service) it's known as a circuit-switched telephony, because it sets up a dedicated connection between two points for the duration of the call.

VoIP, on the other hand, is known as packet-switched telephony, because the voice information travels to its destination in countless individual network packets across the Internet. This type of communication presents special TCP/IP challenges because the Internet wasn't really designed for the kind of real-time communication a phone call represents. Individual packets may ? and almost always do ? take different paths to the same place. It's not enough to simply get VoIP packets to their destination. The packets must arrive in a fairly narrow time window and be assembled in the correct order to be intelligible to the recipient.

To improve performance, VoIP employs encoding schemes and compression technology to reduce the size of the voice packets so they can be transmitted more efficiently. Audio signals are also digitally processed in order to accentuate the voice information and suppress background noise. To conserve bandwidth, VoIP systems stop transmitting during lulls in a conversation and even generate some "comfort noise" to forestall the eerie silence that might make you think the call was disconnected.

VoIP uses a number of compression standards that offer different balances between packet size and audio quality. Generally speaking, the higher the compression the more simultaneous calls you can have, but the lower voice quality will be.

Despite all of the advantages of a VoIP system, it does have its drawbacks. For instance, some VoIP services will not work during power cuts, and the service provider may not offer any type of back-up power solution. And as yet many VoIP providers do nit offer you directory help or yellow pages facilities.

Preparing for VoIP

The key to success with VoIP ultimately comes down to proper planning. The scope of a VoIP implementation can vary according to needs and desires, ranging from the relatively straightforward - using VoIP for local and long-distance calls or to communicate between a company's multiple offices - to more complex deployments like call centres.

In most cases, saving money immediately with VoIP won't require you to purchase any additional phone equipment or jettison what you already have, because devices called media gateways let conventional phone equipment (ranging from individual phones to an entire PBX) interface with your Internet connection. Taking advantage of VoIP's most cutting-edge features (like the ability to have your calls follow you as you travel) typically require specialized VoIP phones or other equipment and/or a hosted PBX service.

If you're interested in trying VoIP, then you should check out some of the free VoIP software available on the Internet. You should be able to download and set it up in about three to five minutes. Get a friend to download the software, too, and you can start tinkering with VoIP to get a feel for how it works. One place to look is http://www.skype.com.

Norma Allan ? 2006