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VoIP What Is It? How Will It Help You?

by Clint Dixon

Since the 1990's, VoIP companies have flourished in direct parallel to the technological advancements of VoIP products. New VoIP companies continue to emerge on the corporate scene as the need for VoIP services increases. In fact, due to the demand for VoIP services, VoIP companies are involved in some rather serious competition with one another. What does this competition mean for the consumer? The bottom line is both a continual increase in product quality and lower costs for VoIP services and products. In 1995, VoIP emerged as a source of communication technology, once people realized the potential for sending datagrams over the internet. Similar to email, VoIP technology permits users to contact individuals by using broadband phone services. Consequently, users of VoIP technology get huge savings on long distance and international calls. Unlike the early days of VoIP, technology has advanced beyond the point in which both the caller and the recipient had to possess the same software in order for VoIP to work. Now, VoIP works virtually anywhere that a user can obtain broadband phone service. Not only has the basic service of VoIP changed, but many VoIP companies have added numerous features to their list of services. For instance, VoIP companies now offer consumers the ability to use call forwarding, caller id, and voice mail. Further, VoIP continues to add to the list of technological accomplishments each year. In the 1990's the world saw a few, select companies that offered VoIP products and services. In just a little over a decade however, the number of VoIP companies that offer services like broadband phone calling and free internet calls has increased. In fact, the Online Edition of Communication News lists forty VoIP service providers in their online buyers guide. With so many VoIP companies available, the competition for consumer loyalty is immense. VoIP technology has rapidly increased and VoIP companies continue to ensure technological progress. Undoubtedly, the number of emerging VoIP companies will continue to rise in order to meet demand. As a result, consumer demand will also directly feed the motivation of existing VoIP companies like Cosmocom, Vonage, Quovia, and Skype to, not only maintain current service and product quality, but to exceed it. VoIP companies are not only striving to exceed their current technology, each company is in a virtual race to do so. VoIP companies are currently working on technologies that will eliminate the need to be connected to broadband services entirely. In doing so, VoIP companies will be able to provide mobile phone users with the same services they provide their broadband customers. Even once small VoIP companies are striving to meet the demands of consumers and their efforts have proved successful. For example, Vonage, known as the Broadband Phone Company, a VoIP company that was established nearly four years ago, has well over 350,000 members. Thus, the smaller VoIP companies that currently exist may very well become far larger companies in the nearfuture as their growth remains analogous with customer demand. About the author: Clint Dixon is an Search Marketing Consultant, Experienced Author. Visit His Website http://www.sem-advance.comto learn more!

VoIP Phone Home?

by Jason Canon

VoIP Phone Home? The movie Extra Terrestrial (ET) coined the phrase “phone home” and each year American’s look for more cost effective ways to do just that. The past 10 years have seen the development and growing popularity of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies to achieve cost savings over the traditional circuit-switched telephone networks. The two dominate technologies used for VoIP are: (1) the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and (2) Peer-2-Peer (P2P). For business and educational institutions SIP VoIP solutions have produced substantial savings. For home voice users, however, SIP VoIP is still value challenged. A typical circuit-switched landline phone costs about $19.95 per month (plus tax). The good old American landline phone should be graphically depicted beside the word “reliable” in the dictionary. Not only does it keep working, even when all electrical power fails, but it can even provide you with a light to dial with. At $15 dollars per month SIP VoIP is still value challenged due to the lack of full support for E9-1-1 emergency services and of course the reliability issues inherent with using a real time application over a “best effort” network like today's Internet. Although few VoIP articles still reference Internet Request For Comments (RFC) 3714 “IAB Concerns Regarding Congestion Control,” the technical challenges associated with VoIP are widely known. Further, even with the recent dubious edict by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that VoIP service providers will provision support for E9-1-1 within 90 days, this still leaves the reliability issues unresolved. The use of adaptive rate CODEC’s to prevent congestion collapse is a swell idea if it applies to my neighbor’s service but not my own. Using adaptive rate CODEC’s to elicit voluntary user preemption has no appeal in the modern world. Technology is supposed to be getting better and it is clearly not better that users receive disconnects or degraded service quality in order to constrain network bandwidth consumption. Quality of Service (QoS) has been the four letter word of the Internet for a very long time. Yet, we know that real time applications such as video and voice are a mismatch for “best effort” service models. Cost savings are important, but not if they require users to accept backward technology leaps. After 9/11 the United States should have begun standardization efforts to insure that VoIP QoS levels would be equivalent to circuit-switched networks, especially where emergency E9-1-1 calls are concerned. The recent FCC order only requires that E9-1-1 call center traffic be properly routed. It does nothing to insure QoS of the connection once the call is completed. As for SIP VoIP in the home, there is too little incentive for savvy consumers to part with more of their hard earned communications dollars for an industry offering that simply does not meet the needs of the user. Until something concrete can be done to move SIP VoIP forward, service based on P2P such as Skype seems to be the only sensible choice on the kitchen table. Why should home users pay $15 or more per month for less reliable communications than they already have with their land line? Skype gives users the ability to experience “best effort” voice over the Internet for FREE. Could this be the reason why more than 125 million copies of Skype’s P2P software has been downloaded? And for the occasions where interconnection with the existing circuit-switched telephone networks is required, Skype offers a very competitive 2 cents per minute interconnection rate. With Skype you can talk for 12 ½ hours interconnected to the phone system for the same cost as a basic rate SIP VoIP service. Until genuine changes are made to support SIP VoIP QoS there does not appear to be a convincing or compelling reason today for users to choose anything other than P2P VoIP services such as Skype to render Internet “best effort” home phone services. You can read the complete article and view associated graphics online at: http://canon.org/VoIP_Phone_Home.html. © Peach ePublishing, LLC About the Author Jason Canon has authored numerous technical research papers including: photonic switching, gigabit networking, VoIP E9-1-1 and others. He is an expert author for EzineArticles.com. E-mail: Jason Canon at jmc@canon.org.