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Broadband phone or Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) sounds like a deadly dull techie phrase, but with broadband access it’s really something to get excited about.
Until now VoIP has in reality been an idealistic concept, but with the growth of broadband globally it could shake up the world of telecommunications in the same way that mobile phones have.
Essentially, VoIP is a technology that allows voice calls to be made over the internet. And with the infrastructure and bandwidth already in place to carry voice calls, the cost of international phone calls are tiny (3p per minute to Sydney) in comparison to using most landline or mobile phone operators.
A small but rapidly growing number of providers are now emerging to offer these services on a subscription basis as broadband adopters grow to appreciate the practical applications and savings to be made.
Market researchers are now predicting that this year will see the volume of VoIP enterprise telephone stations sales exceeding traditional PBX handsets for the first time. In the US – always a good indicator of trends in the UK and Europe – VoIP phones accounted for almost half of all enterprise telephone stations in 2002.
With the boundaries of online and offline activity blurring and intermingling, IP phone manufacturers are bullish about prospects. Their arguments for convergence of data and voice traffic no longer centre purely on the unit cost of IP phones, but on return on investment and lower total cost of ownership.
Apart from the bean counting, there is also the issue of VoIP’s ability to support a range of new services and applications such as call accounting, phone display services, call management, voice mail and even customisable call centre-type software for customer service and tracking. For companies with more than one site, or home workers, VoIP not only cuts costs of inter-office voice calls but means more people can be part of a live operation with their phone extensions effortlessly routed over the net.
VoIP technology is improving all the time, but there’s still some way to go in convincing many business users that talking over the internet can be as reliable as their trusty landline system. And not without good reason.
The crux is that on POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) each voice call has its own private road; the system is configured solely for telephone calls, there’s no sharing with data traffic or other users. With VoIP voice calls have to jostle for bandwidth with all the other packets of information flying around the internet.
Getting the voice information into a data packet to send across the net is nothing compared to managing the packet traffic. To gain an idea of the problem faced, imagine this: a fully laden 20 tonne lorry. Now, break up the load onto 2,000 Transit vans, send them from Inverness to Glasgow via Edinburgh and have them arrive in exactly the same order and at the right time.
As unlikely as it seems, though, this is what VoIP is already achieving across the net using broadband. Voice data needs only 8k of bandwidth on IP, and the latest IP phone systems’ improved call handling and jitter control means users find quality as good as, if not better, than traditional systems and superior to mobile phones.
Next time you phone a call centre, the agent you speak to could well be home at sitting in pyjamas and slippers!
I hope you have found this interesting and helpful .
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