VoIP Explained

So you've heard about VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and want to know what its all about? Well you've come to the right place. I'm not even going to tell you that VoIP is a protocol, because thats not what you want to know. You don't care how it works, just that it does... whatever it is.

So what is it? Well in a nutshell, VoIP is just another, cheaper way for you to speak to people all over the world. In the past, the "plain old telephone system" (POTS) was the only way to carry your voice across wires and cables to the person you were speaking to. However, now many people have broadband (fast) internet which is connected all the time. Since you can get webpages from around the world at no extra cost, it was inevitable that at some point people would start using the internet to talk to their friends instead of the POTS and in doing so, save a lot of money.

You are probably wondering how you can start to use VoIP to save money on your phone calls, especially if you make a lot of national or international phone calls. The recipe is simple, here are the ingredients -

• A Broadband Internet Connection
• A Hardware or Software based VoIP phone
• An Australian VoIP Provider

Advantages and Disadvantages

How will buying all this save you money? Your broadband connection costs money, as does the equipment and the VoIP provider will also have fees to pay. The saving comes with the significant price difference in phone calls. For example, a call from North Sydney to South Sydney is 25 - 40 cents depending on your carrier, but is closer to 10 cents (on average) with VoIP. That's just a local call, now if the same person in North Sydney calls a land line in Perth, the cost is still only around 10 cents, but could be several dollars with the regular phone network.

What's that I hear you say? You want to disconnect your phone carrier and just use VoIP? That would be satisfying wouldn't it! Especially considering the rate you pay for line rental and phone calls. However there are two main problems with this. The first, is that many broadband connections such as ISDN and DSL services, require you to have an active phone line (Not technically, but as a matter of policy as defined by Telstra). The second problem is that emergency numbers such as 000 are not always supported with VoIP services and a broadband service/router is in some way less reliable than the regular land line.