What is VOIP ?

By: Chris Curtis

Voice over IP or VoIP is becoming increasingly popular as businesses see the opportunity for substantial savings on their phone bills.

As our internet connections become faster, the ability to utilise the bandwidth to carry voice conversations is enhanced.

With Voice over IP, the conversation is digitised and transmitted using the same underlying protocols that we use to browse the internet.

If both parties to the call are using VoIP, then the call can be made without having to pay any call charges. If a lot of international or STD calls are made, substantial cost savings can be made. 

Many VoIP providers have sprung up allowing customers to call normal phone numbers at reduced rates. Calls to international numbers can be made for a few cents per minute, and calls within Australia are capped at 10 cents. Calls to Australian mobiles are still relatively expensive, but still often half the rate of fixed line carriers.

One of the most well known VoIP providers is Skype (http://www.skype.com). Its free to sign up for an account and Skype to Skype calls are free. Skype provides some software for the users computer and a headset and microphone are all that is needed to create a telphone. Skype users can call out to real phone numbers for about 1.7 Euro cents per minute. Skype is a closed system in that they do not use any of the recognised standards, and are not compatible with non-skype VoIP devices. Many larger organisations do not allow Skype to be used since IT departments lose control over bandwidth utilisation in their networks.

Other Australian based providers include Engin, Pennytel, Oztell and Faktortel. These providers all support standard protocols such as SIP and IAX.

Many telephone handsets are now available which connect directly to a local area network or to a PC via USB.

My-ITManager does have considerable expertise in this area and can provide solutions ranging from handsets to full blown PABX systems.

Issues

The biggest issue remaining for VoIP to really take off is consistent quality. Since any slight delay in transmission of a voice packet is noticable by the participants of the call, something as simple as another user downloading a file can cause the quality to erode considerably. As bandwidth increases, this problem will diminish.

The devices, including IP Phones and Analog Telephone Adapters which can convert signals from a normnal telephone to VoIP, are all still very difficult for non-technical users to configure or troubleshoot.

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