What Exactly Is VoIP Technology?

VoIP, which stands for voice over internet protocol and also known with different names by different people and regions such as IP telephony and broadband phone, is the new face of making calls. The telephones and telephone lines that have been used in the past are the analogue lines and whatever communication you do over the old phones was done in the analogue format. However, with VoIP you make calls through internet and thus your voice is transferred from one place to another in the form of packets that need conversion from digital packets to analogue signals if the receiver has an old analogue phone.

When you make calls through VoIP technology and the person receiving your call is using the same service from same service provider, chances are that you will have to pay nothing for such a call. The calls can be made from special phones, computers and analogue phones. It is entirely dependent on your VoIP service provider if it allows you to use the phone, special phone or all options at once. When you make a call through VoIP and the receiver is on an analogue phone and is connected to conventional PSTN, the call will first go to the VoIP gateway and then decoded to the analogue phone.

VoIP services had already started to raise their heads in 2004 but it was not until 2009 when things revolutionized and VoIP service started to look as the future of telephone calls. In the past if you have a VoIP phone and you wanted to make a call to your friend, you couldn’t if was taking service from a different VoIP service provider than you. This standardization of the service has shown some ways to the service providers and to the consumers. You can now afford long distance calls in very low rates as compared to what they used to be in the past because of standardization of VoIP.

Making a VoIP calls may require you to buy a particular setup including the VoIP phone but there are service providers allowing you to make phones calls from your old phones however with the help of an adapter’s attachment. In call centers and corporate infrastructures this technology plays a big role since many calls can be received using the same line but it does have its cons as well. Susceptibility to powers failures and the quality of voice delivered over the lines could be a little bit of compromise with this new technology.