VoIP Who?
VoIP is the process of making and receiving voice transmissions over any IP network such as the Internet, an office LAN or a private network between corporate offices. VoIP is a core technology that drives everything from voice-chat software loaded on a desktop PC to Mac full-blown IP-based telecommunications networks in large corporations. VoIP is a revolutionary technology that has the potential to completely rework the world's phone systems. VoIP is location independent, only an internet connection is needed to get a connection to a VoIP provider; for instance call center agents using VoIP phones can work from anywhere with a sufficiently fast and stable Internet connection. VoIP is attractive to consumers because it's a cheaper alternative to traditional phone services. VOIP is a good technology, and has been for years. VoIP is thought by many to be the future of telephony, and putting a little thought into what your company will want from it in the future will help you choose the best VoIP solution today.
VoIP
VoIP telephone calls can be placed either to other VoIP devices, or to normal telephones on the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). VoIP calls can be placed across the Internet. VoIP has become popular largely because of the cost advantages to consumers over traditional telephone networks. VoIP's potential cost savings are obvious when a business considers running all of its calls over the same IP network it set up internally for data, as well as over a phone line to its internet provider (which could be its phone company). VoIP can allow you to make a call directly from a computer, a special VoIP phone, or a traditional phone connected to a special adapter. VoIP services convert your voice into a digital signal that travels over the Internet. VoIP has advanced Internet-based telephony to a viable solution, piquing the interest of companies small and large.
Business
Like many new technologies, it has started its economic life by reproducing familiar services and features from the established products it is trying to replace; in this regard, VoIP providers promote PBXs, call routing, automated voice response, and other things businesses are used to looking for. Business-class VoIP provides tight integration between your firm's desktop and phone technologies. Switching to VoIP More and more businesses today receive their telephone service through the Internet instead of from the local telephone company lines. Many businesses are also using their internal local and wide-area network infrastructure to replace legacy enterprise telephone networks. But the real enterprise turn-on is how VoIP empowers businesses to mold and customize telecom and data communication solutions using a single, cohesive networking platform. These business drivers are so compelling that legacy telephony is going the way of the dinosaur, yielding to VoIP as the dominant enterprise communications paradigm.
Providers
Companies providing VoIP service are commonly referred to as providers, and protocols which are used to carry voice signals over the IP network are commonly referred to as Voice over IP or VoIP protocols. Although few office environments and even fewer homes use a pure VoIP infrastructure, telecommunications providers routinely use IP telephony, often over a dedicated IP network, to connect switching stations, converting voice signals to IP packets and back. Some people use VOIP in addition to their traditional phone service, since VOIP service providers usually offer lower rates than traditional phone companies, but sometimes doesn't offer 911 service, phone directory listings, 411 service, or other common phone services. While many VoIP providers offer these services, consistent industry-wide means of offering these are still developing. VOIP services are often much less expensive than traditional providers. The quality is as good as or better than traditional phone providers, and much more advanced due to all the new features and technology. Second, the features most Internet phones offer are remarkable most of which normal phone providers cannot even come close to offering. Internet phone providers have spent millions of dollars on research and development and have fine-tuned their hardware and services so that their sound quality is indistinguishable from that of a regular phone. All you need to do is connect your VoIP adapter to your internet connection (some providers require you to have a router, others don't), and then connect a telephone to your VoIP adapter.
VOIP is a technology that will be growing very rapidly in the very near future, totally changing how we traditionally have communicated before. VOIP is easy to use, and depending on the service and method you choose, installation can be as easy as downloading software or attaching an adaptor to your computer. The primary reason for migrating to VoIP is cost, as it equalizes the costs of long distance calls, local calls, and e-mails to fractions of a penny per use. Above all else, VoIP is basically a clever "reinvention of the wheel. Given this situation, it is not entirely clear whether there would be a significant higher demand for VoIP among consumers until either public or community wireless networks have similar geographical coverage to cellular networks (thereby enabling mobile VoIP phones, so called Wi-Fi phones or Vo-WLAN) or VoIP is implemented over legacy 3G networks. To put it simply, VoIP is cropping up everywhere. Another major strength of VoIP is its portability since it uses the worldwide network of the Internet; users are not tied to any one physical location for a variety of services. As soon as you receive your VoIP equipment, hook it up and activate it so that you can maximize your free trial and see how great VoIP is. As a rule, VoIP is much cheaper than traditional phone services. So VoIP is very much becoming a good small business option. Because VoIP is digital, it may offer features and services that are not available with a traditional phone.
Richard Butler Jr. is a successful IT Consultant and publisher of IT Information Resource Kit blog where he provides more information on software reviews, pc support and web hosting Web Hosting Service Solutions . You can get free computer advice from his website Retlub .