One of the most interesting technologies lately is VoIP. No, this is not a new brand of swim fin or basketball. Instead, it is an acronym that stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. While most people who have heard of it associate it with making long distance phone calls over the Internet, it is much, much more.

Let's start with its techie description. Simply put, it's a way for telephone calls to be made over networks normally used for data. Clear? I didn't think so. Let me try to explain a little better. In the old days of telephone technology, telephone calls were actually pretty primitive. Basically, for you to talk to someone, the 2 wires in your telephone had to be physically connected to the 2-wires in the other party's telephone.

In general terms (and I know some phone company people out there will cringe at the simplicity of this description), if you wanted to call your Mom, the following scenario occurred. The 2 wires from your house lead to a phone company location, commonly known as a central office or CO. From that CO another 2 wires go to the CO closest to whomever you're calling, and finally, another 2 wires go from that CO to Mom's house. This is pretty simple if you live in Aiea and Mom lives in Pearl City, but what if Mom moves to the mainland? You need a whole lot of wires to get there. This technology is known as circuit-switching, and is quite inefficient. One call ties up a whole bunch of wires.

VoIP is based on packet-switching technology, which is the same type of technology used for data networks, such as the Internet, or the local area network in your office. This allows you to use a single network to support both your phone system and your computers. Such a network is often referred to as a converged network.

So what about making calls over the Internet? There are several companies that now offer such services including Vonage, IConnectHere and Net2Phone. In fact, many of the discount calling cards offered nowadays (Call the Philippines for only 7 cents a minute!) are based on VoIP technology.

Of course, as many of you who have actually tried this service can attest to, one of the biggest drawbacks to making phone calls over the Internet is that the clarity of the call can be somewhat lacking. Delay, noise, dropouts and other problems are prevalent in Internet-based phone calls. Did I mention that it was cheap?

On private networks, however, such as the local area network in your office, the quality of VoIP calls is on par with old-fashioned circuit-switched phone systems.

So should you jump out and convert your conventional phone system to VoIP? Well, not so fast. VoIP costs are still relatively high, so unless your current system is on its last legs, it will be hard to justify the expense.

If, however, you are building or renovating a new office, VoIP systems can be cost effective. Why? In the old days, you needed to provide 2 jacks in the wall at every desk, one for your phone and one for your PC. With VoIP you will only need one because they run on the same cabling system as your data network; this dramatically reduces cabling costs.

Using this same principle of running voice and data on the same network, larger organizations, with locations spread out over several islands or even states, can use a VoIP solution to save on long-distance phone calls between sites. While this was possible before the advent of VoIP, it's even more economical now.

VoIP-based phone systems are also quite flexible. Your phone number and associated services, such as voice-mail, are tied to your phone. You can plug in your phone anywhere on the network, even at the satellite office on a neighbor island, and you will have the same phone number.

Additionally, software applications continue to be developed for VoIP-based phone systems. Time-clocks that allow employees to punch in and out, and even e-mail are now available.

Finally, don't confuse VoIP with a technology known as computer-telephony integration (CTI) or unified messaging. Unified messaging simply allows your email and voicemail to be combined into a single location, like your email inbox. It allows you to listen to your voicemail while checking your email. Some systems will read your emails to you when you call in for your voicemail. This solution usually only makes sense for people who have a high volume of messages coming in from both sources.

Please be short and to the point, and respect the other voices in the discussion. You may edit and delete comments for up to three days after date of post. We reserve the right to edit or delete inappropriate comments. For more information read our site policies »

In order to comment, you must be logged in. Login | Register | Help

Comment

Denotes required fields.