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COMMUNICATIONS

 

The Future of voip

The future looks bright for VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol technology.  Ever since the idea began in 1973, the interest in increasing the technology has grown.  It has been the world-wide use of the internet which has fueled VoIP’s development and visibility in the marketplace in recent years.
               

VoIP began as simple transmittal of voice over the broadband network of the internet.  Now it has a much different story.  VoIP’s connection into the public switched telephone networks helped it overcome a number of early disadvantages like not being able to call 911 or make calls from the internet to land lines.  It progressed past simply talking to each other to offering 3 way calling, voice mail, and more.  The enhancement of sound quality and addition of regular telephone services at a lower price has made VoIP much more of a contender for traditional calling services.

All this improvement has led to substantial growth in the VoIP market.  Trends show more and more service providers popping up, and an increase in the services that are being made available has followed.  VoIP is now spreading it’s incorporation to a new frontier to include calls to and from mobile phones as well, which is expected to significantly increase VoIP usage.  

Skype Ltd., the company that put VoIP on the map in 2005, is one of the first to try to make the technology mobile.  At the moment calls can be received at no cost, however out-going calls must be made using cell phone minutes to connect to Skype which then charges at its own rate for the call.  But this defeats VoIP’s main benefit of free calling.  Because of increased demand in VoIP technology there has been a slight increase in prices, but the improvements and added services definitely balance out the increases in cost.  If estimates are correct VoIP is poised to make traditional telephony communication a thing of the past.