How Does VoIP Work?

Published on 2008-12-04 19:51:11 by Alan Harten

VoIP lifestyle There can be no doubt that VoIP technology has revolutionized the cost of making long-distance voice telephone calls. A number of high-profile communications players such as perhaps the best-known VoIP provider for the public, Skype, take the human voice then transmit it via the Internet to almost anywhere in the world.

This means that instead of going along traditional telephone lines, calls are transmitted via the Internet. This is known as voice over Internet protocol technology or as it is better known, VoIP.

VoIP is not just another long-distance phone company trying to get you to sign on the dotted line. VoIP is a completely different way of moving telephone calls across the globe, the fact that it does not make use of traditional telephone technology is one reason that it is infinitely cheaper than using an old-fashioned phone.

VoIP Is No Use To Our Company

You may think that VoIP has no interest or use for your company and probably wouldn't lead to any significant financial savings. The chances are that you could not be more wrong, if you already have a broadband Internet connection, you already have the facilities necessary to transmit extremely cheap phone calls.

Making use of VoIP software, phone calls can be made through the Internet and avoiding making use of telephone company’s facilities and their excessive, out of date, charges.

VoIP has taken some time to become as popular as it is now but it is not a completely new technology. There have been some companies providing VoIP services for several years, but people did not realise that services such as Skype were VoIP calls.

With the more widespread availability of high-speed broadband VoIP has become increasingly popular. So much so that many American telephone companies are racing to bring in their own VoIP systems in order to try to get back into the long-distance provider game.

Three Kinds of VoIP

Again, VoIP differs slightly from traditional calls, which essentially speaking only has one method of calling from one person to another. VoIP on the other hand has three different solutions, firstly, Computer-to-Computer, Computer-to Phone, Computer-to-mobile phone, or secondly IP Phones and finally ATA.

VoIP Adapter

VoIP adapter

The Analog Telephone Adaptor ATA makes use of a traditional phone and most people already have on their desk, which is simply unplugged from the telephone socket and connected it to your ATA and through that, to your Internet connection.

The ATA then analyses the analog sound from your phone and converts it into a digital signal that are capable of being transmitted via the Internet. All that sounds very complicated but in fact all you need to do is plug in the cable from your phone into the adapter and plug that into your broadband router and it is ready to make calls.

Simple IP Phones

VoIP phone

ATA is now being more or less overtaken and made obsolete by the second version of VoIP, which makes use of IP Phones. To the naked eye, this is no different to a regular office phone with the same buttons and handset. An IP phone is simply plugged directly into the broadband modem to establish a connection.

All this means is that instead of putting your IP phone into a connection on the wall you simply plug it directly into your router. There is no software to install as everything you need is already cleverly built into the phone itself. IP phones that make use of Wi-Fi also allow callers to make long distance calls via VoIP if they are sat in a Wi-Fi hotspot without the use of a laptop.

Free Telephone Calls Made From Your Computer

Softphone

Financially the most attractive way to make use of VoIP technology is through the third option computer-to-computer voice communication. This is made possible by downloading some freely available software from the Internet a suitable headset with microphone and you will be able to make calls within just a few minutes.

VoIP for larger company usage also gives rise to some additional and unique features. Many companies have already utilised the possibilities of VoIP technology particularly in the area of intra-office phone calls.

Call Your Office In Asia At Local Rates

Because of its unique possibilities, VoIP can allow large companies the ability to take advantage of its superior sound quality in order to direct International incoming calls through a company office located most conveniently for the calls destination.

The advantage of this is that international calls can be made at local call rates, because of this, employees phone calls will cost the same if they are contacting another member of staff on the floor above them or in another branch on the other side of the world.

Call From Anywhere

One of the big advantages of VoIP with regard to long distance calling is that standard long distance plans from telephone companies relate to just one location. This means that your office is set for cheap long distance calls with the telephone company of your choice.

VoIP means you are not restricted to your office to make very cheap long distance calls. With VoIP, you can make calls anywhere that there is a good Internet connection. As we mentioned above VoIP does not make use of telephone lines for the purposes of making calls therefore, your location is irrelevant. So long as you can access a broadband Internet connection of any kind, you can make long distance calls as if you were back in the office.

Other benefits include redirecting your calls over the Internet so that you can to look at your voicemail in the form of an e-mail; conversely, you can send a voicemail by attaching it to an e-mail

Telephone Systems Are Inefficient

The traditional way of making telephone calls is reliant on a system known as circuit switching. It is known is that we new technology as in one form or another it has been used for over a century. When a call is made between two points the connection runs in both directions in a circular motion, thus it is a circuit.

Therefore, a 10 minute phone call would mean that the circuit is always open for the duration of those 10 minutes. This used to me that literally one wire had to be dedicated to one phone call at a time, this is why telephone calls used to be exorbitantly expensive.

Making use of fibre-optic cables, calls are now transmitted digitally meaning that the voice is broken up into computer code then sent down the cable with many other calls at the same time. This has the advantage over the old way of connecting telephone users but it is still grossly inefficient, the reason is digital signals have no way of knowing what is the voice of what is just noise.

Useless Noise

Because of the circuit, principle when one caller is talking and the other one is listening all parts of the circuit have to be open even though the voice is only going in one direction. So at any one time half of the cable is being used up by useless noise.

In addition, people pause between words and sentences, these gaps in the voice are also transmitted down the line. As users we would say what do we care how the system works. From our point of view, we are paying for all that useless noise is being transmitted down the line.

VoIP is capable of cutting out all the useless noise, which means less space is used on the cable, which means more calls can pass down the same line saving huge amounts of money in infrastructure setting up the system.

The system of cutting out all this useless noise is known as Packet-Switching, similar technology is used when connecting to websites, rather than a constant connection, the system selects when connections are needed and switches them on and off according.

Therefore, if you are just reading a page of text like this one, there is no need for you to be connected to the page; connection will be reformed when you click to move to another page. The same is true with VoIP if you're not talking you're not connected to the system; say a word you reconnect, saving huge amounts of space within the cable.

But How Does This Save A Company Money?

All this means that many more calls can be passed down the same cables at the same time. This is infinitely cheaper for companies who transmit telephone calls via the Internet rather than making use of traditional telephone lines.

The bottom line is these huge savings in infrastructure which amounts to multi-billions, a VoIP telephone call actually uses up around a quarter of the space within a fibre-optic cable than a regular phone call does. These huge savings can therefore be passed on in the form of much cheaper phone calls.

All Companies Will Eventually Use VoIP

Industry analysts believe that a complete switch over to VoIP for company telephone calls will be inevitable. However they do believe that a total transformation from old-fashioned telephones over to VoIP will take at least 10 years. But in the end, large and small businesses across the globe will certainly make the move to VoIP.