Internet Telephony
The idea of using your company network as a backbone for making telephone calls has been around for several years, but recent developments in the technology have increased the amount of companies who have started using it. You might know internet telephony by several other names - VOIP, Voice Over IP (IP stands for Internet Protocol), IP telephony, broadband telephony and VoBB (Voice Over BroadBand). Skype is a widely adopted application that uses the internet backbone 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. This is why it is so common to find cable/telephone/internet access all bundled together from companies in the business and domestic customer markets.
The cost of making calls also drops significantly as the internet (which is free) is simply being used to transmit your call in the form of data which is reassembled at the other end of the connection. 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.
Users frequently experienced poor call quality with internet telephony. 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 highly efficient bandwith and as this limited factor is removed more and more businesses are migrating their business phones over to IP based service. 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 encompasses much more than voice calling and includes video and web conferencing, interaction with email systems, multiple and anywhere/any device utility for making and taking calls, faxes and emails and much more. 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.