What is VoIP Voice Over Internet Protocol?

Make all the long distance phone calls you want for one low price!   Many broadband Internet providers are touting new services to make long  distance bills a thing of the past.  Companies are foregoing  traditional telephony service and opting to go with newer services that  use network technologies to provide telephone service.  How are these  things possible?

Voice Over Internet Protocol  (VoIP) is a new technology that uses broadband Internet and/or network lines to transmit real-time voice information.  This technology has the potential for completely changing  the way phone calls are made and making phone companies a thing of the  past.

To make a phone call on the Internet, several things must happen. On  the sending side, analog voice signals are digitized, compressed, divided into packets and transmitted over network lines. On the  receiving end, the signals are recombined, uncompressed and converted back into audio.  Because the voice signals are digital, they can be  transmitted just like any other data packets on a network. The major difference between these voice packets and regular data packets is that  for VioP to be effective, the signals must be delivered in a timely,  reliable manner. VioP can be relatively inexpensive to implement,  although costs rise as the complexity of the system increases.  Because  many companies already possess the infrastructure necessary to  implement VoIP, more and more of them are opting to forego traditional  fone service.  Cisco's CEO John Chambers predicts that enterprise  networks will accelerate their adoption of Voice over IP technology.

There are currently several problems with this technology.  If the computer or network lines fail, then telephone service is interrupted.   While the stability of computer hardware, operating systems and network infrastructure has improved significantly in the last decade, crashes still occur. The "up" time of these systems is still significantly less than with traditional phone systems--which often continue to function even during power outages. Another issue is that tracking  the origin of a call is difficult because the signals are transmitted over the Internet. This is especially important to emergency responders to 911 calls. Caller ID service may not function either. Additionally, devices that make calls using phone lines, such as fax machines, cable TV boxes, etc. may not function properly. Law enforcement officials may have difficulty wiretapping phone lines that use VioP technology. Finally, the quality of VioP service is lower  than that of a traditional phone system. Since the information is  transmitted over network lines, it is subject to the same issues that other data streams experience including delays, packet loss and  bandwidth availability. Thus VioP phone calls may break up, hesitate,  or cause words to be dropped. All of these issues are being addressed  and their significance should be eliminated over time.

How Viop Phones Work

Long distance phone calls will never be the same again thanks to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The basic premise for this technology is to convert analog audio signals into digital data for transmission over the Internet, a technique which allows you to make your phone calls over the internet.
The way viop works is pretty straight forward. Whereas the traditional circuit switched technology reserves a dedicated path from a caller to the receiver for the entire duration of the conversation, viop converts the voices into data for transmission over data networks. At the receiving end, the data is once again converted back into audio.
The implication of this process is that a regular Internet connection is all one needs to make absolutely free phone calls. In using free viop software for Internet phone calls, the role of the telephone company and consequently its charges are completely eliminated.
This path breaking viop technology is poised to redefine the very method the world's phone systems use. Major players in the viop world, like Vonage, are already making their presence felt having been on a steady growth for some time. Leading traditional carriers like AT&T are already in the process of incorporating this revolutionary new technology in markets across the US. Simultaneously, regulatory agencies including the FCC are taking a long hard look at viop to harness the technology into a more secure format.
Among the multiple advantages attributed to viop technology, include the use of the same lines for both data and voice transmissions. With one network, both installation and maintenance expenses are minimized. Compression technology makes it possible for multiple calls, as many as eight, on the same lines as opposed to the circuit-switch systems. Neither is there any compromise on sound clarity.
With viop it is also possible for various devices to be inter-linked, thereby enabling added incentives like PC-Telephony. Integrating the phone system to a customer database provides ideal support for customer relationship management or CRM.
Phone calls using viop are not subject to toll charges. When both sides have high-speed Internet access and viop phones, distance charges don't apply no matter how long the call duration or distance may be. The possibilities in terms of businesses and consumers to save on costs are therefore staggering. What's more viop can also be utilized in setting up an independent private interoffice networks for main to satellite office communications.