IP Telephone Is A Reality Now ! ! ! ! !

As I have promised to write about IP Telephony in my Previous Post so writing the same.




You see life and Technology keeps on changing, we have travelled from our traditional phones to a more advanced IP phone. Did you remember, earlier we use to have huge phones, in which the dialing system was numbers printed on a ring. Now you can carry phones in your pocket.


Most of you must be fed up with the usage rates of lour local telephone service provider. Did you ever made a free call with your own phone and? VOIP is the technology with which you can do so.



VOIP AN Emerging Technology


VOIP is the new emerging technology which is used in making phone calls over standard internet protocols. Sources have presumed that this technology will emerge a standard technology for making calls, leaving the traditional analogue phone system down. Why is this technology preferred by most of the major companies today? The only answer is the cost. It works like this, lets say you have a p2p connections to your friends system. There will not be any charges to transfer a file from your computer to his computer, as this is totally private interface without the interference of any third party vendor. VOIP works in the same way, but here the technology used is INTERNET. Sources write that VOIP technology will take the place of today’s traditional phones. A customer can place a call using the three technologies of VOIP. These are:

ATA (Analogue Telephone Adaptor)

This is used to connect your traditional phone to your computer using ATA, which does the required signal conversion for you.

IP phone

New device, which looks just like a traditional phone. It has its own software and it ca be connected directly to a router. It uses standard RJ-45 cable to connect.

Computer to Computer

This uses the software whose functionality is same like a phone. These freewares are downloadable from internet. You are just paying for the internet service which you are using. The call which you make goes through internet like a packet. What ever is the distance the quality depends on the connection speed and the software.


When Did It Started ?

It all started when products like Gizmo products and Skype developed their own services to make a long distance call over internet using software. This worked out to be much cheaper that the traditional phones which we have today. Let’s say a person in India places a call to his colleague in India. This call is treated as a local call irrespective of his colleague is in which part of the world.
The major development started in 2004 when this technology was in its initial phase, it is from then after, major IT firms and call centers opted for this technology.



IP Phone in IT Firms

IP phones are getting common these days. You can see IP phones in every IT industry today. Think about it, what could be the reason? The only reason you can get it, the cost of deployment. Yes, the cost of deploying IP phones is lesser than that of normal phones. As you know that the rates over internet are calculated mostly based on capacity (MB or GB), if you make a call the rates will be calculated based on the data that is getting transferred from one destination to another. This is same as your internet usage, while using internet at your home, the ISP rates it based on the capacity that was downloaded. It is because of this, most of the companies are opting for an IP phone to support their customers.



Advantages Of Changing the Voice Based Communication to IP Telephony

Using IP telephony in Call Centers reduces costs and complexity, and boosts productivity and customer service capabilities. Like we do from PC’s in network, same way a Virtual network of IP phones can be found. Giving the experience of a single office to the customers. So everyone everywhere is using the same functions and has the same operations support.

An IP contact center deploys sophisticated applications and engages all of your enterprise’s resources, both technical and human. Branch or remote sites can provide seamless global coverage and respond to spikes in call volume, all through a connection to the central hub. Using this technology, users can work from anywhere, including their homes. As a result providing a cost control strategy for many contact centers.

Now, the natures big barrier, which is the geographical barrier is now nowhere a limit for Contact Centers. Regardless of physical location, contact centers can be logically grouped. As a result, it is easier to manage the resources and also traffic load across the IP WAN can be balanced. Enterprises that have branch locations can tap into the branch workforce for temporary contact center work and the branch offices can tap into the main call centers for assistance during peak periods. With the right IP telephony applications, less-busy operations can back up other operations with temporary help during the busiest periods.




Disadvantages and Threats of Using IP Telephony


Bandwidth

The main drawback is that, the IP telephone technology truly depends on one of the most un-reliable and most vulnerable services on this planet which is INTERNET. Yes, the quality of the IP communication depends on the internet connection speed.
You get a mail delay, which you can manage for hours, but imagine a delay over IP phones, wouldn’t it be funny to say “Hello” and wait for 1hr to get the reply “Hi”. You utilize the best out of this technology if you have a Broadband connection, which will soon be a reality in India.


Power Failure Threat

Power failure leads IP phone to go down. The conventional phones which we use in our houses are connected using copper wires till the service provider’s end, where they have the power supplies to supply the power required for the functioning of these devices. These phones use phantom power which is supplied over the line by the central office. Even if there is a power failure, the service providers will have backup generators which will prevent the phones to go down. But this is not the case in IP phones; a home user of the IP phone will use his modem which is powered by a conventional 3V battery. If the power goes down there is no secondary power source for this IP phone, hence the phone goes down, leaving no option for the calls. This is the case only in the home use, as the home users cannot afford a backup generator. But this is not the case in industries which opt for this technology.


Security Threat

This technology is still lagging behind in proper encryption policy. Though it is possible to use IP SEC to secure the point to point connection, but still you cannot rely over internet as it is the place where all the hackers and bad guys do their jobs


Apart from the above disadvantages, there is one more which says, This technology is still lagging behind in proper encryption policy. Though it is possible to use IP SEC to secure the point to point connection, but still you cannot rely over internet as it is the place where all the hackers and bad guys do their jobs



Useful link

VOIP Predication for 2007: Best bets from VOIP experts.


Visit my next blog for the advanced and Technical features of using an IP phone. Also I will be writing about the future in VOIP based communication.