VoIP Telephony Basics

VoIP Telephony Basics

by: Jeremy Maddock

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Telephony is the process of routing voice conversations over an Internet Protocol network, rather than through traditional circuitswitched telephone lines. The voice information is converted into digital data packets and then transmitted over an IP network, such as the internet, or a local area network.

The main advantage of VoIP is the fact that it is highly efficient, and thus very affordable. The cost of transferring digital information over an IP telephony network is significantly less than that of transferring analog information over a traditional telephone line. Because of this, VoIP users can make long distance and international calls to anywhere in the world, at any time of day, for a fraction of what an ordinary phone company would charge.

Although call quality was originally a problem for VoIP customers, this issue has improved greatly with today’s progressing technology. Because of the fact that VoIP traffic goes over a broadband line, there is enough bandwidth available to allow for very good sound quality.

As anyone familiar with telecommunications would probably tell you, VoIP Telephony is revolutionizing the way that people around the world make phone calls. More and more people are seeing the benefits of VoIP, and the number of users worldwide is growing at an astounding pace.

If you have a broadband internet connection, and a touch tone telephone, you are fully equipped to set up your very own broadband phone system, and start making use of VoIP Telephony to save money on all your long distance phone calls.

For more information on the benefits of VoIP, and how you can start using it to save money on your phone bill, please visit http://voiptelephony.teleclick.ca/connect/ …

About The Author

Jeremy Maddock is the owner of a successful telecommunications news website – http://www.teleclick.ca

This article was posted on September 10

by Jeremy Maddock

Will VoIP be a Mass Market Product?

Will VoIP be a Mass Market Product?

by: Patrizia

A common thinking among กMarketing people ก is that for every product that enters the market there must be a path, a target, a need ( real or created) that decides how the product must enter the consumerกs life, which part of the population is more likely to go for it, which niche it is going to fill and, most important ก…certain things being stated, something other than what is stated follows of necessity from their being so.ก and that is the final issue: the price.

Depending on those anavoidable patterns a product is more or less ready for a certain market.

High technologically devices, the ones that offer perfect quality and cost a fortune will target the elitarian market, where the price has not big importance (on the contrary, if the price would be lower than what certain people can afford, the product wouldn’t reach them) since it means luxury.

When a product ceases to be luxury and begins to be a need, then the mass market is ready. The product can enter 60% of consumersก lives, reach easily a good upgrade in the percentage and become ก The New Product of the year 200….ก.

Letกs consider the VoIP market.

Prior to recent theoretical work on social needs, the usual purpose of a product invoked individual (social) behaviors. We now know that these assumptions are not completely wrong.

Wrong would be NON considering them.

In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole offer will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no one of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.

Now, thanks to a series of breakthroughs in network theory by researchers we know that power law distributions tend to arise in social systems where many people express their preferences among many options. We also know that as the number of options rise, the curve becomes more extreme. This is a counterintuitive finding most of us would expect a rising number of choices to flatten the curve, but in fact, increasing the size of the system increases the gap between the #1 spot and the median spot.

In other words: give to the people the choice among desktop phones and mobile phones and the majority will choose what they think more convenient, in spite of the cost of the service.

In a way the cost of the service is the only left advantage in favour of the fixed telephony.

If the price was the same the desktop phones would disappear from the life of the average consumer (mass market consumer).

To see how freedom of choice could create such unequal distributions, consider a hypothetical population of a thousand people, each picking their favorite way of telecommunication. One way to model such a system is simply to assume that each person has an equal chance of liking each kind of telephony. This distribution would be basically flat most kind of telephony will have the same number of people listing it as a favorite. A few will be more popular than average and a few less, of course, but that will be statistical noise. The bulk of the telephony will be of average popularity, and the highs and lows will not be too far different from this average. In this model, neither the quality of the voice, the availability, the design of the device nor other peopleกs choices have any effect; there are no shared tastes, no preferred genres, no effects from marketing or recommendations from friends.

This is the mass market of VoIP as dreamed and forecasted by most hardware producers.

People would choose VoIP in spite of the fact that the systems are not intercommunicating, the available phones are just desktop phones, most of the population doesn’t have a กFlat rate DSLก and some do not even have a decent connection, (just one ก UP to…) and just because VoIP means cutting cost.

They have a few wrong assumptions:

Most of the people want to save calling internationally

Most of the people will use a cheap Flat rate connection

Most of the people know how to handle a computer or a network, and so solve all the eventual problems that could arise.

But they do not consider that:

Most people call locally and just a few once in a while internationally.

Most of the people do not have a cheap flat rate Internet

Most of the people are not IT experts.

Besides peopleกs choices do affect one another. If we assume that any kind of telephony chosen by one user is more likely, by even a fractional amount, to be chosen by another user, the system changes dramatically.

If Robert (our average mass market consumer) likes to have a phone in his pocket, available mostly anywhere, it is very likely that Mary would like the same.

Is VoIp ready for the กMass Marketก?

The answer could be No and Yes.

What would VoIP offer more than the existing several choices?

Price. Telephone calls would be completely free of charge among two IP phones ( and that believe me is a GREEEEAT THING when you try it)

The never enough considered satisfaction to be able to ref..ck who f..cked us for many years…

What would VoIP telephony need to be #1 spot in the curve?

A reliable PORTABLE Phone that doesn’t need millions of Hot Spotกs to work.

A reliable, cheap flat rate internet connection anywhere for everybody.

If ONE could put these patterns together, THEN VoIP would really have the chance to be #1.

See my website: http://www.worldonip.com or contact me [email protected]

About The Author

Patrizia is an ebooks publisher. See also http://www.easymediabroadcast.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 02, 2004

by Patrizia