The Advantages of Internet Telephony

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Using your company network as the backbone for making telephone calls is not a new concept, in fact it has been around for several years but recent developments in technology has increased the rate of adoption of internet telephony. Internet telephony goes by numerous names and acronyms – VOIP, Voice Over IP (IP stands for Internet Protocol), IP telephony, broadband telephony and VoBB (Voice Over BroadBand). Skype is the first widely adopted application which uses the internet backbone as the basis for transmitting voice and video call data.

The advantages of internet telephony are numerous, not least the cost savings associated with running telephone calls over the same network as the company network and internet. Combining the two applications (the web and phone) makes it so that that only one network is required. In a wider context, telephone and internet service providers (ISP’s) can use their existing network, and network security, infrastructure to deliver services to customers. Hence why it is so common to find bundle packages with cable/telephone/internet access in business and customer markets.

The internet is used to transmit your calls in the form of data which gets reassembled at the other end of the connection, so the cost of making calls drops dramatically. A user simply needs to pay for internet access and this bypasses the need to pay a telephone company for the service. The cost savings become even more apparent when you consider that the internet backbone is just as capable of delivering your voice or video data to Australia as it is to the cubicle next door in head office.

Issues arose with internet telephony because of the poor call quality which was frequently experienced by users. Call quality has dramatically improved with better technology and data transmission techniques such that call quality is in many instances just as good as a land line call. Another disadvantage was the fact that you couldn't make a telephone call if the internet connection was down - internet telephony relies on the internet backbone to transmit the call. This has led to criticisms of VOIP for its lack of redundancy but installations frequently run hand in hand with a fixed line system and still deliver significant cost savings.

Modern internet telephony systems use bandwidth with a high degree of efficiency and as this limiting factor has now been removed, more and more businesses are performing the migration of their business telephone service to IP based services. It is not just the cost savings which can be achieved which is the business driver but the functionality which can be delivered. Internet telephony includes not only voice calling, but also video and web conferencing, email interaction, and device utility for making and taking calls, faxes, and emails. This is referred to as “unified communications” - treating any communication which can be made or taken using any device and internet telephony provides the basis for this merging of communications technology and application.

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