It appears that the age of traditional landline telephony may be coming to an end, as several homes and businesses around the nation are making the switch to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony for faster, cheaper and more reliable service. In fact, VoIP has become so popular that even the Californian Secretary of State's Office is in the process of installing IP phone services in its facilities, due to the fact that they are faster, more affordable and even more secure than traditional landline phone networks are.
Because VoIP transfers calls through the Internet instead of traditional telephony channels, the data is converted from clunky and low-quality analog signals into digital packets that take up only a fraction of the bandwidth. Not only does this deliver higher quality voice at a lower price, but it also makes it possible for VoIP customers to remotely use the provider's equipment as a hosted PBX (News - Alert) network.
According to BroadConnect Telecom, the Secretary of State's office is using the hosted VoIP network in order to reduce budgetary expenses, enhance productivity and increase scalability. Productivity is expected to increase due to the fact that VoIP makes telecommuting cost efficient and valuable, while allowing Broadconnect to manage additions to the phone network allows for quick and easy scalability.
Finally, VoIP systems also encrypt voice data as it is converted into a data packet. Though the original intent was to reduce file size, this also happens to make VoIP calls much harder to decode. Even if a signal is intercepted and recorded, only fragments of the data can be captured at a time – and each must be decoded separately. For the California Secretary of State's Office, some information that is exchanged is so sensitive that it could spell disaster if it fell into the wrong hands. The fact that the government is willing to trust VoIP as a fool-proof phone system is growing evidence for why more businesses around the world are switching to VoIP phone services.
Edited by Alisen Downey