Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a hot topic in today’s communications and information technology industry. To truly develop an understanding of what VoIP is, however, it’s important to have at least a small handle on how Internet communication works in general.
In its simplest formulation, information sent over the Internet is broken down into packets, which are then routed through various network segments and devices and reassembled at the intended destination. The way in which these packets are constructed, relayed, and put back together again is known as Internet Protocol (IP). Information exchanged during a telephone call is simply another form a data, and it is thus possible to transmit voice data in the same way.
With traditional telephony, analog voice data is exchanged over the public switched telephone network, which creates a dedicated circuit over copper landline wires. With voice over IP (VoIP), however, digital voice data is sent using the packet switching method mentioned above via the Internet. With advances in bandwidth, throughput, compression, and encoding techniques and related communication technology, this process has become extremely efficient and cost-effective.
Naturally, businesses, government agencies and home users alike have been flocking to VoIP service providers to take advantage of such low-cost telephony. There’s more to VoIP than costs savings, however, as VoIP’s digital nature lends itself to a variety of software enhancements and systems integrations. This means that a business’s IP telephony system can interact with other digital communications systems, applications, and platforms. The result is a slew of additional value-added features and capabilities that are otherwise impossible or extremely expensive to implement with plain old telephone service (POTS).
Features include auto-attendant services, Find Me-Follow Me capabilities, presence functionality, conferencing capabilities, call recording, call forwarding, distinctive ringtones, emailed voicemail, and a whole lot more. VoIP systems can also be converged with other IP communications systems into larger unified communications (UC) platforms, allowing all forms of communication to operate together as a single whole. As an example, a VoIP system can push a phone call to your office IP phone through to your home softphone using a unique ring reserved for business calls, which, if you still happen to miss, will send an email with the missed call information and voicemail attached.
The number of feature configurations are almost limitless and will undoubtedly vary depending on the needs of a given business or individual. Nevertheless, for any organization looking for a versatile, highly-scalable, and inexpensive telephony platform, VoIP systems are the way to go.
Edited by Blaise McNamee