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.
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