05/ 24/ 2005
by Charles R. McConnell
You may have given it little thought, perhaps no thought at all, but a number of the telephone calls you receive could be coming to you not through telephone lines strung from pole to pole but rather through the Internet. Rapidly advancing telecommunications technology is presenting new opportunities, and companies are moving rapidly to take advantage of them.
Internet telephony is exactly what it sounds like, telephone service using the Internet instead of traditional phone lines. In the current literature and advertising material, you'll find references to "VoIP." This is an acronym for "voice over Internet protocol." So VoIP takes normal voice conversation and changes it from an analog signal to discrete data packets for transmission over the Internet. However, VoIP is a broader concept than it seems; Internet telephony is VoIP over the public Internet.
To equip for Internet telephony you need a multimedia PC (personal computer with microphone and speakers), a broadband Internet connection (either cable modem access or DSL) and a "soft phone" (the appropriate software program). You can also do it using a non-multimedia computer, a broadband Internet connection, a regular telephone, a router and a telephone adapter. Since Internet telephony can't work with dial-up Internet access, as its popularity increases you may see more people to move up from dial-up to broadband Internet access. Cable modem service and DSL are both several times faster than dial-up service and fairly close to each other in cost. Eventually it may not be a matter of whether most users subscribe to some form of high-speed access, but rather consideration of from whom they get the service and how well the service provider does at retaining its customers.
A recent study, The High-Speed Internet, Challenges and Opportunities 2004, by Horowitz Associates, indicated that nearly 40 percent of present Internet users would be willing to get their telephone service from their cable companies if the right features were offered. At the top of their list were unlimited local and long-distance calling.
A number of companies are dealing in both landlines and wireless calling and are offering Internet telephony plans. Most promote unlimited local and long-distance calling, and several stress international calling. You will see advertisements that boast "cheap calls worldwide, including video calls;" and "unlimited service, $19.95 per month;" and several suggest their plans as the solution to "costly and unpredictable monthly phone bills."
Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of their choice of service providers, and the providers entering this particular arena are trying to be sensitive to consumers' needs. Thus, most of the available plans include the capacity for popular features such as voice mail, call forwarding, caller ID and call logs. Also, most plans are generally portable, allowing use of the service from wherever there's a broadband connection available. In many instances telephone numbers, both landline and wireless, can be transferred from one service to another when a customer changes providers.
Internet telephony isn't likely to render traditional telephone lines obsolete, at least not in the foreseeable future. However, its use is certain to grow as consumers become more sophisticated in their understanding of broadband access and more aware of their choices of service providers.
