What is Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP)?

VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol. It describes a bundle of hardware and software that enables callers to use the Internet as the transmission medium for telephone calls, thus avoiding many of the charges associated with traditional telephony. Depending on the price of your net connection, Internet telephony software essentially provides free telephone calls anywhere in the world. Current standards are approaching the quality of traditional telephone connections.

How does it work?

In the most basic form it works by digitizing your voice and then transmitting that information in the form of packets, the basic building block of all net traffic, over the internet. At the destination location those packets are reassembled and delivered to the end user as analog voice.

What do I need to succeed?

1) High speed Connection: DSL, IDSN, Cable, T1.
2) An account with a VOIP provider: Your telephone number.
3) A VOIP modem: Allows the use of traditional phones.

What are the advantages?

Cost. VOIP can save users a significant amount of money over traditional telephony. As quality increases and high speed connections proliferate, more and more people will switch to VOIP.

Who are common providers?

There are many viable providers of VOIP. Some of the larger ones are: Vonage, Net2Phone, MCI, AT&T, Innomedia, and a host of others.