| I opened Todd Cardin Answering Service twenty | | | | local telephone company to the VoIP provider, and |
| years ago there were not a lot of options in phone | | | | then over the Internet to the other parties telephone |
| service. Today there are so many options and choices | | | | .The second type is software based VoIP phone |
| in telephony that it is mind boggling. It is confusing living | | | | services, where you use a microphone headset |
| with so many choices. Even those of us in the | | | | plugged into your computer and make calls, which are |
| telecommunications industry find it impossible to keep | | | | routed through your cable modem, by using the |
| up with everything. This is especially true for voice | | | | keyboard. VoIP can also be run over a private data |
| over IP. | | | | network. |
| Many people hear the term Voice over IP or | | | | The big advantage of VoIP is that voice information |
| broadband telephone service and still are not sure | | | | sent over the Internet avoids using the fixed circuitry of |
| what that means. VoIP stands for Voice over Internet | | | | traditional telephony networks – avoiding the tolls |
| Protocol. Using VoIP, voice information is converted into | | | | charged by traditional telephone service. |
| digital packets and sent over the Internet, and then | | | | The big disadvantage of VoIP is quality of service. |
| converted back into analog signals before reaching the | | | | While in theory because packets are sent over the |
| phone receiver at the other end. This is a growing and | | | | best route at the time rather than through fixed routes, |
| new technology which will surely expand as the | | | | VoIP services would be reliable and consistent, in |
| number of broadband connections increase. | | | | reality problems such as packet loss, bandwidth and |
| There are two types of VoIP service. The first is | | | | plain old Internet outages make VoIP quality and |
| called hardware based VoIP. People using this type of | | | | reliability inconsistent. |
| VoIP phone services, have their phone fitted with an | | | | VoIP is the future of telephony and the quality and |
| adapter that will connect to a high-speed Internet | | | | reliability will improve and the industry will explode even |
| connection. When a call is made, it goes through your | | | | further. |