Internet telephony
What is actually Internet telephony? You hear it everywhere; yet, these two magic words have a great impact on the population. It is in fact a category of hardware and software that enables people to use the Internet as the transmission mode for telephone calls. If, for example, you are a user who has free, or fixed-price Internet access, Internet telephony software essentially provides free telephone calls anywhere in the world. To date, however, Internet telephony is not able to offer the same options and quality that the classic telephone service does.
There is a wide variety of Internet telephony software applications available. Some of them, such as CoolTalk and NetMeeting, come bundled with popular Web browsers. Others are simply stand-alone software products. Internet telephony products are also called IP telephony, Voice over the Internet (VOI) or Voice over IP (VOIP) products.
Internet telephony (or short - IPT) is transport of telephone calls over the Internet, no matter whether traditional telephony devices, multimedia PCs or dedicated terminals take part in the calls and no matter whether the calls are entirely or only partially transmitted over the Internet.
Among the most significant benefit of Internet telephony and driver of its evolution is money-saving and easy implementation of innovative services: in the future, Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSP) may use a single infrastructure for providing both, Internet access and Internet telephony. Only data-oriented switches could be deployed for switching data as well as 'packetized' voice. Multiplexing data and voice could also result in better bandwidth utilization than in today's over-engineered voice-or-nothing links. Not only the providers, but also their clients will profit of lower costs eventually.
Now, customers may take advantage of flat Internet rating vs. hierarchical PSTN rating and save money while letting their long-distance calls be routed over Internet. This is especially true in Europe, where the prices of long-distance calls are still higher than in US. But: according to some estimation, the prices of the traditional and the Internet telephony will equalize together with the convergence of quality of services provided by them.
The Internet telephony users may also profit of its software-oriented nature: software solutions may be easily extended and integrated with other services and applications, e.g. white boarding, electronic calendar, or WWW. Deployment of new IP telephony services requires significantly lower investment in terms of time and money than in the traditional PSTN environment. So, if you are thinking about getting a broadband Internet connection, why shouldn't you consider Internet telephony?
There is a wide variety of Internet telephony software applications available. Some of them, such as CoolTalk and NetMeeting, come bundled with popular Web browsers. Others are simply stand-alone software products. Internet telephony products are also called IP telephony, Voice over the Internet (VOI) or Voice over IP (VOIP) products.
Internet telephony (or short - IPT) is transport of telephone calls over the Internet, no matter whether traditional telephony devices, multimedia PCs or dedicated terminals take part in the calls and no matter whether the calls are entirely or only partially transmitted over the Internet.
Among the most significant benefit of Internet telephony and driver of its evolution is money-saving and easy implementation of innovative services: in the future, Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSP) may use a single infrastructure for providing both, Internet access and Internet telephony. Only data-oriented switches could be deployed for switching data as well as 'packetized' voice. Multiplexing data and voice could also result in better bandwidth utilization than in today's over-engineered voice-or-nothing links. Not only the providers, but also their clients will profit of lower costs eventually.
Now, customers may take advantage of flat Internet rating vs. hierarchical PSTN rating and save money while letting their long-distance calls be routed over Internet. This is especially true in Europe, where the prices of long-distance calls are still higher than in US. But: according to some estimation, the prices of the traditional and the Internet telephony will equalize together with the convergence of quality of services provided by them.
The Internet telephony users may also profit of its software-oriented nature: software solutions may be easily extended and integrated with other services and applications, e.g. white boarding, electronic calendar, or WWW. Deployment of new IP telephony services requires significantly lower investment in terms of time and money than in the traditional PSTN environment. So, if you are thinking about getting a broadband Internet connection, why shouldn't you consider Internet telephony?
