For
over a decade now the prospect of using the internet to carry
voice calls has been ‘next years technology’.
Although there has not yet been any revolution in the way
we route our phone calls, a number of enabling technologies,
services and providers are now in place which can finally
deliver a reliable, high-quality solution at very low cost.
Most businesses
and individuals who are serious internet users now have un-timed
and effectively un-limited connection to the internet. Users
can spend all day downloading data from the other side of
the world at no added cost. And yet, when those same users
make a phone call they are charged by the minute, whether
the call is local, national or international. In practice
the data may well travel over exactly the same route, on the
same wires, owned by the same people. Only the billing mechanism
and price is different. Wouldn’t it be better for the
end user if the telephone call went with the internet traffic
with the attendant price saving?
Another
attractive application for many businesses would be to connect
home workers and sub-offices. The only on-going cost at each
site would be the charge for an always-on internet connection.
The remote sites could use the internet connection to log-in
to the main office network and also run their telephones as
extensions to the main office phone system.
A third
use of Voice-over-IP technology is to replace the expensive
telephone system that most companies require. The idea is
to use existing computer hardware such as servers and Ethernet
cabling to handle telephone traffic. Telephone system functions
such as call-transfer and hold could be handled by software
and telephone devices could just be plugged into a network
point instead of dedicated wiring.
The three
applications outlined above can be summarised as:
- Long-distance
call routing.
- Point-to-point
connections.
- In-house
PBX systems.
Click
Here for details of our VOIP Gateways
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