Advantages of VOIP

It allows a caller to make long distance calls without having to pay much, or anything for them. Combine the VOIP technology with a broadband, or high speed, internet access line, and VOIP provides an easy, inexpensive way to make phone calls all over the world.

The advantages of VOIP become clear when you understand how the technology works in comparison with traditional phone service. With traditional phone service, your long distance phone calls are routed from your local provider's network to your chosen long distance provider's network, where it is routed to the receiving party's local phone provider's network and finally, to their home phone line.

Since multiple providers are involved, multiple providers charged a fee for the call, which the long distance provider passed on to you in the form of an often hefty per-minute charge. But VOIP has changed all of that. The greatest advantage of VOIP is that it removes the long distance company from the equation, making a long distance phone call virtually the same as a local phone call.

How? By using the internet as the routing method that passes the call from your local phone provider to your receiving party's local phone provider. You initiate the call, and your analog voice signal is translated into a digital signal. That signal is then sent via your internet service to the internet, where it is routed to the receiving party's local phone provider's network, translated back into an analog signal and sent to the receiving party's phone. With VOIP, the call is sent as quickly as it once was across the long distance phone provider's network.

The fact is, many long distance companies have long since understood the advantages of VOIP and have been using it to route calls across their network for several years because it is so low cost. It eliminates the need to have costly, hard-to-maintain hardwired connections for calls.

For businesses, the advantages of VOIP are growing all the time as more and more companies are beginning to offer high-quality, reliable VOIP service for more than just telephone calls. Many companies offer packages that include internet service and even video conferencing via VOIP.

But for the average consumer, the greatest advantage of VOIP is the cost - or rather, the lack of cost. If you have a computer with a sound card, modem, speakers, a microphone and a (preferably) high speed connection, and you download software from companies such as skype.com, you can be making free long distance and international phone calls using VOIP in as little as 5 minutes.