AJLA SPAHIC   Director
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family
of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over
IP networks such as the Internet, rather than the public switched
telephone network (PSTN). The basic steps involved in originating an
Internet telephone call are conversion of the analog voice signal to
digital format and compression/translation of the signal into Internet
protocol (IP) packets for transmission over the Internet; the process is
reversed at the receiving end. The PSTN is a circuit switched
technology which dedicates an entire circuit to a call. The difference
is that the IP call is compressed, utilizing much less capacity than
the circuit call. The cost of circuit calls is determined in time
connected, and the IP call?s cost is determined by the actual data
transmitted. Expressed as a portion of the bandwidth available in a
typical broadband connection, IP calls use only a tiny bit of the
available capacity, and therefore they can be made on the same line as
your data services with no noticeable degradation of service. On a
network level, it is more costly to charge for the small amount of
bandwidth used for calls than the bandwidth itself costs and therefore
individual circuits as used by residential and small business customers
are generally free.

VoIP was originally developed for Enterprise-level businesses, and
it has been widely adopted by them with over 80% of Large Business using
some form of Voice over IP technology. The problem for the Individual
user, and for Small Business, it that the technology is sometimes
dizzyingly complex, and at first glance it seems too complicated for all
but the most technologically adventuresome (Geek). While individuals
and Small Businesses could absolutely benefit from the use of VoIP...
with potential savings approaching 70-80% in a typical case, fear of the
technology, and an unwillingness to abandon reliable, but insanely
expensive Telephone Company service seems impractical without a team of
knowledgeable IT Professionals backing them up.
Oct 16th 2010 03:23