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CaféNETThe Global Move to VoIP
Telephone calls have been provided essentially the same way for well over 100 years. The telephone network has consisted of a purpose built system dedicated to setting up voice circuits between two callers. However this century-old tradition is about to be radically changed forever.
The Digital Revolution
The world started to go ‘digital' just over 30 years ago - GSM Mobile Phones, DVDs, MP3 players and HDTV - are all examples of this transition. Telephone networks have also moved to digital by following telecommunications industry developed standards which computerised the old systems and digitised the circuits that calls go over. But at the same time telephone calls were going digital, computer inter-networking was experiencing phenomenal growth with the rise of the World Wide Web, which is enabled by the Internet Protocol (IP). This protocol has now become the globally accepted standard for almost all forms of digital networking - including digital telephone calls!
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is the name given to the process of turning voice into digital packets and then transporting those packets, between callers, over a data network. So now telephone networks are changing from setting up dedicated circuits between callers to sending small packets of voice across a ‘shared' network. Over the next few years we will see all telephone services move to VoIP. The significant advantage IP offers is ‘convergence' meaning that telephone calls, computer data, video streams and other digital information can all share the same underlying IP network. Convergence provides considerable economies for network operators compared with the traditional approach that involved building dedicated service specific networks, like the old telephone network.
VoIP and the Internet
One misconception that is worth clearing up is that while VoIP uses the Internet protocol it does not mean that all telephone calls go over the Internet. IP is a computer networking protocol, which is used in both private (corporate LANs, operator networks) and public networks (the Internet). In the majority of cases VoIP services provided by network operators will not pass calls over the Internet. Where as services such as Skype exclusively use the Internet.