The term VoIP refers to Voice over Internet Protocol which put simply, means using the internet to make a phone call. The main benefit of making a call “on line” is the difference in price. By using the infrastructure of the internet you can make a call to most parts of the world at a very low cost or even sometimes for free. This allows you to talk longer to friends, family and business contacts and not pay a high amount of money for the privilege.
When the internet became popular a number of years ago, the great phenomenon was the ability to send an email and it instantly arrive on the other side of the world. Most people pay a flat monthly fee now to access the internet and by paying this flat fee you have an “always on” connection to the world of the internet. VoIP uses your internet connection, but rather then routing text data and image data across the internet, your connection can be used for voice data too.
What do you need to make a VoIP Call?
Not a lot of equipment is needed to make a VoIP call, and it is almost as simple as setting up a regular telephone on your land line. There are several ways that you can make a VoIP call and I will cover the more popular ways to make VoIP calls below.
1.)The first method to make a VoIP call is by purchasing a VoIP service from a provider such as Vonage or ViaTalk. Service in the UK for Vonage can cost from £5.99 special offer/Month and allows you to make free calls across the UK and Northern Ireland as well as other special deals on international countries. When signing up for a VoIP provider you can use your regular telephone plugged in to a VoIP Router which often comes provided for free with the calling plan you choose. The setup is simple and you just plug in the router/modem in to your broadband internet connection and then connect your regular landline phone in to the router/modem. The advantage of this system is that you get a great deal on calling costs, at an affordable monthly cost and you are not tied down to your computer when making a call.
2.)The next option is to use your computer with either a USB phone attached, or by using a microphone and speakers. Companies such as Skype offer free calls to other users who use Skype anywhere in the world, and they offer very cheap calls to landline phones around the world by using their SkypeOut service. Other companies such as Yahoo, MSN etc… also have software to allow you to make calls from your computer. This method is good for those who travel with a laptop and want to keep contact, or for those who use their computer daily and can sit at their PC making a call.
3.)Another way of making a call is to use a Wifi phone with software embedded in from Skype, Vonage and other companies. The phones are about the size of either a mobile phone or cordless phone and use wifi signals to connect you to the internet. The advantage of a wifi phone is that you can carry it in your pocket and make a phone call from anywhere you find a wifi hotspot. If you are stuck in an airport in France and need to call home, you can connect to the wireless access point, dial away and talk away for little or no cost. It certainly beats the cost of a roaming mobile phone charge.
These are just 3 ways in which you can make VoIP calls. Other ways to make cheap calls are from services such as X-Series from the Three mobile network in the UK. For a flat fee of £5/Month you can make calls for free to the Skype network allowing you to potentially call anywhere in the world a Skype user and only be charged the flat £5 fee for the month.
VoIP Advantages
VoIP has a number of advantages:
* More features which are free… Your regular landline generally has the ability to make and receive calls. Extra features are charged for. With VoIP a lot of extra features are bundled in such as 3 way calling, Caller ID, Call forwarding to name a few.
* If using a VoIP router you are not tied down to the phone socket on the wall. With the internet being worldwide, you can plug in your VoIP router to any broadband connection and make calls as though you were sitting in your living room. Likewise, those calling your local area code number might actually be very unaware that they are speaking to you while you are in Japan, but yet they called your local number. The internet has no boundaries.
* With a PSTN (landline phone) you are tied down to the socket on the wall. If you want to add another phone line then a local phone engineer needs to pull more cables in to your home to add another line. With VoIP you can connect several phones to the internet connection and not even have an engineer visit your home.
VoIP Disadvantages
Although VoIP has a number of cool advantages and breaks down a lot of barriers that normal phone lines still have, there still are a few disadvantages:
* Quality of Service (QoS)… On some broadband networks the traffic on the internet can be congested at busy times of the day. This occasionally leads to jittery calls and points where the voice cannot be heard for a fraction of a second. I personally have not witnessed this on my home service provider which is Virgin Internet using the Vonage service, but I have witnessed it every day on my office IP phone when traffic on the local network is congested. Of course the answer is to have the company upgrade their bandwidth, but until that happens I will need to stick to the occasional jitter. To be honest, it isn’t that bad though and very rarely I have to ask someone to repeat something.
* When the power goes out, so does your service. Unlike a PSTN network which powers most phones (except cordless) a broadband phone will almost always not work when a power cut happens, unless you have a UPS powering your routing equipment.
* ISP problems… these are not too common, but occasionally your ISP is doing maintenance and your phone will not work.
Conclusion
If you want to step in to the world of VoIP then I recommend you sign up to Skype first and try out their free service by calling a friend in another country over the internet at your PC. If you are happy with the call quality and want a more normal (regular phone) solution then check out Vonage, ViaTalk and others listed at the bottom of the page. VoIP is something I adopted last year and although it has it’s faults, I still feel the service is good enough for what I need and it costs me less then a regular PSTN phone would. I am sticking with VoIP for now.
If you have any questions, or want help with choosing the best provider for you, then check out our forum and feel free to post any questions over there. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
{ 1 trackback }