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New To VoIP ? – Learn The Basics Of Voice Over IP

admin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 10:35:56 +0000

Are you new to the term Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)? If so, here is a simple explanation of how it works. VoIP technology takes the analog signals used by your traditional phone, changes them into digital signals, and then sends them over the Internet. How can this save you money? You are already paying for Internet service, when you combine your phone to your Internet you do not have to pay for space on the Public Service Telephone Network (PSTN). You are using the high-speed broadband for two applications, your phone, and Internet and pay only one low price per month.
VoIP technology is innovative and has the potential to change the way the world communicates. No longer is there only one way to call someone. With VoIP technology, you have three different methods you could consider for making a call.
The easiest method is by using an adapter that you connect your traditional analog phone into and then connect the adapter to your computer. This will then transform your phone into a VoIP phone. Several providers such as Vonage and AT&T are offering those who choose their service this adapter free of charge. It is very easy to set up: you take it from the box, connect your telephone to the adapter and then the adapter to your computer and you are ready to make calls. Some providers may also send additional software, but that is simple enough to install.
If you prefer you can purchase an IP phone that resemble traditional phones but instead of having a connection that would go into the wall, they come ready to connect to your computer. They are equipped with all of the hardware necessary to work immediately with the VoIP technology.
For those individuals who enjoy chatting with their friends and family on the computer you can also take advantage of VoIP technology. Providers offer free or low-cost software that you download. Then the only other equipment that you need is a sound card, high-speed Internet connection, microphone, and speakers. You can call anyone via computer-to-computer free except for the monthly rate that you have agreed to with the provider of your choice.
If you are interested in trying VoIP technology, research the various providers and the plans they offer. You will be amazed at what you are able to do with this new technology. Gone are the days when you could not talk to friends and family due to the high cost of the call. Now you can talk to them for as long as you like and relax knowing your phone bill will not skyrocket with long distance charges.

VoIP: The Expanding Bandwagon

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:34:09 +0000

VoIP has definitely taken the Internet by storm. It is clearly one of the best things that ever happened to the whole history of the World Wide Web. It could certainly use some improvements, but recent updates and trends show that it is definitely getting there.
For one thing, VoIP applications have now become sleeker and prettier than ever. When it used to be applauded for practicality, its applications such as Skype have gotten much criticism due to its lack of esthetic appeal or style. The VoIP mediums being released these days are now fashion show material, while at the same time, retaining its highly praised features. Like many other Internet features, the VoIP has been slowly making its own mark and setting the trademark of convenience and a more personalized way to communicate and do business over the Internet.
The VoIP’s increasing fame and usage in the Internet makes the competition stiffer and stiffer at the moment. In a way, this is good for consumers because companies are now accelerating innovations to their VoIP products, making more features available and more options at the consumers’ disposal. The bigwigs of VoIP are now working hard to maintain their top status since more and more up and coming VoIP companies are emerging in the market and making the competition fiercer than in the past when VoIP was just launched.
Vonage, one of the top VoIP providers, are now being confronted with their equally competent competitors. Unlimited calling at a fixed price seems to be the trend of VoIP providers, and they usually battle in the arena of affordability and features. Much of the companies work at generating features and maintaining an affordable price for their customers. Loyalty is also encouraged by means of making more bargain prices at long-term subscriptions.
Features of VoIP now include a tie up with mobile carriers, so that even when you are not at home you will be able to make use of their service. Also, they have this sorting feature between business and personal calls which will help you align your calling priorities accordingly. Aside from this call rollover, you can also avail yourself of an emergency 911 service.
Companies such as Nokia and Ericsson are also known to merge with VoIP providers in making the VoIP experience a more mobile one. The VoIP technologies these days are tailored to suit wireless settings, which promotes more remote business transactions at the ease of a well-designed mobile phone.
More and more business companies are harnessing the technology of VoIP in order to be able to save money and time in doing business transactions on a large scale. While it used to be that people need to go out of the office and meet up somewhere to be able to discuss properly certain business agreements, it is not all possible because superior audio quality can be expected from VoIP.
The VoIP is being designed to augment the convenience factor for Internet users. There seems to be hardly any need to commute long distances to make transactions. And beyond business applications, VoIP can now also be used for video games. Much of the hype it has been generating on hardcore gamers worldwide is because of the fact that it makes a good game supreme with its voice feature inclusion.
Also, the VoIP is getting more trusted by major institutions worldwide. From being a medium of personal conversations, the VoIP applications are now being expanded with regard to its usage. The Pentagon of the United States have been allegedly making agreements with General Dynamics System to make use of VoIP in their operations in the Department of Defense. Clearly, this is taking VOIP at another level. There will possibly be more discovered usages for VoIP in the near future, looking at the real progress with which it is going now.
There have also been merges of features between VoIP providers and other technological moguls. This makes more possibilities available for VoIP users in the future. Increasing support and merges with other companies continue to build the credibility of VoIP as an alternative means of communication. Much of the trends to expect this year border on expansion attempts of VoIP companies into making their services more mobile. Small wonder if in the near future it starts to replace all other existing communication devices with such practicality and versatility.

Introduction to Voice Over IP (VOIP) Phone Service

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 10:40:55 +0000

Anyone who is old enough to remember making long distance phone calls 30 years ago would also agree that telephone communication has changed considerably over the past three decades. Certainly the introduction and mass adoption of the cellphone has changed voice communication immeasurably. But there is a new revolution going on in landline communication as well. The latest technology is called Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VoIP for short. It is also known as Internet Telephony, a name that is derived from the fact that VoIP involves making phone calls over a broadband internet connection.
VoIP technology is taking the world by storm for mainly one reason – it is much cheaper than phonecalls made with the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS). It is very common for people who switch to using VoIP over POTS to save several hundred dollars per year off their phone bills. Furthermore, VoIP offers a wide variety of services like caller ID, 3 way calling, call forwarding, and so on at no extra charge. While most of these features are available in POTS plans, they are almost always available only for an extra monthly charge. So VoIP phone service offers improved phone service for less money – who doesn’t love that idea?
VoIP technology has come a long way since it was invented in the mid 1990′s. Originally, computer hobbyists were responsible for creating VoIP so that they could use voice communication between two people who both had computers and specialized voice equipment. The first VoIP companies began delivering products to the market in 1996, and by 1998 or 1999, VoIP technology had become a topic of considerable interest in technically oriented publications. The largest VoIP company (Vonage) started in 2001 and signed its first residential customer in 2002. Within the next two years, newer companies like Sunrocket entered the market to compete with Vonage by offering the same service at an even lower price. Today, an ever-growing number of residential and business customers are adopting VoIP technology as they discover the cost and performance advantages offered by the technology.
Another nice feature of VoIP is that switching from a POTS plan is very easy. You do need a broadband internet connection (cable, DSL, even wireless) but aside from that, the VoIP company you sign with will give you everything you need. The equipment can include either analog telephone adapter (ATA) which connects your existing phone to your broadband internet connection. However, it is more common these days for the VoIP carrier to provide you with a new VoIP phone, which looks just like your regular phone but is specially made to work with VoIP.
One of the latest exciting features of VoIP is portability. On leading VoIP carriers like Sunrocket and Vonage, you can take your VoIP modem with you when you go on business trips or on vacation, and simply connect this modem to any computer at your destination (any computer with a broadband internet connection). If you do this, your phone number travels with you! No one back home will ever know that you are overlooking the beach in Florida rather than sitting in your office in Cleveland. Imagine the possibilities!
The fact that VoIP is internet-based is the only major downside to VoIP. Unfortunately, internet connections occasionally go down, and during this time there is no VoIP service. Many people get around this problem by having a cellphone available as an emergency backup. So many people have cellphones these days that this is usually not an issue. So, you can use the VoIP system for making calls cheaply, and use the more expensive cellphone only for those emergency situations when the internet is down. In this way, you get the best of both worlds.

How Can A Small Consumer VoIP Provider Survive

admin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:44:32 +0000

There is a lot of buzz about VoIP Internet phone service. On the consumer side everyone is getting a lot of exposure to Vonage commercials as well as triple play offers from Cable Companies. From a technology standpoint, VoIP is now much more mature than in its nascent days when Internet telephony meant a scratchy voice conversation over two computers. Whereas VoIP has been used by Telcos to carry voice traffic over long portions of their networks for years, it is now positioned to become the standard technology used to carry voice traffic over the last mile from every consumer’s home. Increased broadband penetration and advances in VoIP technology make this possible, and now there is a long line of VoIP providers out there looking for a piece of the action. They range from giants like Verizon and Comcast to relatively small unknowns. For the first time in the history of telecommunications it is possible to be a telephony provider without the huge barriers of capital needed for switches and network operation centers (NOCS). ) nor the regulatory barrier of being a Local Exchange Carrier. So will the industry be marked by many small nimble players? What is the likelihood of survival for small consumer VoIP service providers?
The Cable TV companies have a strong position in the telephony market. They already have a large embedded base of customers. They also have a local presence, with field installers regularly driving around neighborhoods and customer service locations in every town in which they have a franchise. Having the field installers is a major advantage since they can install VoIP service and also hook up inside wiring so the service experience is no different than before. Therefore a person doesn’t have to be the least bit technically inclined to adopt the service, thereby opening the market to the masses. The pure-plays like Vonage just can’t reach the mass market like this.
Cable companies also have huge brand awareness in their markets. What is also potentially important is that they are perceived as a utility company and people are used to getting phone service from this type of entity. There is a familiarity and comfort level of going to a utility company for phone service.
They also have tremendous strength in both billing and customer service. While some may hate the cable company because they have lengthy time windows for showing up for an installation, may show up late, and may keep you on hold at the call center, the Cable companies are in actuality very good at managing the complexities of their operations. For example, RCN entered some markets years ago as an alternate cable provider thinking they could leverage people’s dislike of the cable companies’ service record and do it better; instead they ended up realizing how very complex it is and ended up doing it worse. If a company wants to scale as a major VoIP provider, they will have to manage the complexities of billing and customer service. The cable companies have been down this road already.
Here is what could be the biggest factor to why the Cable companies will be most successful at VoIP and ruin the chances of other smaller entrants – They provide a broadband connection. Since this is required for VoIP, the incumbent provider has the first dibs on providing voice service. Also, since broadband connections have high margins and VoIP has low margins, broadband providers could treat voice service as a loss leader to get and keep customers on their high-speed connections. NetZero, for instance, is giving away free telephone numbers and low priced VoIP service presumably with the hopes of signing on users for their ISP. Voice service could in fact become so commoditized that it will be given away with broadband service the same way email is today. If this becomes a reality, there would be very little market opportunity and a bleak survival outlook for smaller pure-play VoIP service providers unless they could offer a differentiated value proposition.
The Local Phone Company also shares many of the same advantages as Cable in that they have strong brands, ability to bill effectively, established customer service, and field technicians. They also should provide the greatest comfort level to people for providing a phone service. However, the Phone Companies have dismal showing compared to the Cable companies who have the greatest number of VoIP subscribers. Verizon VoiceWing and AT&T CallVantage each have only 5. 5% of the 2. 9 million pure-play VoIP subscribers (Telephia Q2 2006). Those 320k subs are dwarfed by the Cable Companies like Time Warner Cable who alone had 1. 6 million VoIP customers as of October 2006. Why have the Phone Companies had such a dismal result? Internal confliction between POTS and VoIP is one reason. They can not put emphasis on a low margin VoIP product in their core offer and have struggled to create an effective bundled product strategy with advanced services. They are also expending more resources and internal focus on better broadband offerings than DSL and trying to break into video services. Nonetheless, they still hold second and third positions for share of pure-play VoIP subscribers and have deep pockets, which will allow them to far outspend a small VoIP provider to get mindshare.
Vonage, with 53. 9% of the 2. 9 million pure-play VoIP subscribers, is spending a ton of money to get mindshare and customers. This is good in that it raises awareness of the product category, which helps a smaller pure-play. However, it also presents a huge challenge for smaller providers to compete head to head for customers when a single provider has such a dominant voice.
There are a number of challenges facing a smaller VoIP provider. Small providers have to compete for share of voice against companies that are spending a lot of money. As far as the business case goes, VoIP has relatively small margins and the ROI for marketing campaigns and generating brand awareness is a challenge. Yet without spending money on marketing, it is difficult to capture customers.
Then there is the challenge of the market size. Pure-play providers don’t have local installers and technicians, which limit the market to those who have the technical savvy to set up the service or the willingness to do so. If the target market is defined as people who have the technical savvy to set up VoIP on a home network, then this market is comprised largely of younger people. This group is increasing mobile based and has little use for a landline phone. Also, consider how the overall telephony market will change over the years. People in college now that will be graduating over the next couple of years and getting apartments are 100% mobile based and have never had a landline phone. Thus the market for pure-play VoIP will be shrinking as fast as it grows.
However, there is still an opportunity for small VoIP providers in this challenging market. The opportunity is to focus on niche markets and leverage specific advantages of VoIP that are particularly important to specific customers segments. In such segments, word of mouth advertising is a viable strategy if the service can meet a strong need. This solves the dilemma of investing in media to build a strong brand and maintains better profitability.
ReVoS Internet phone service is an example of a small VoIP provider taking just this strategy. They are focusing on a niche segment of people who make a lot of international calls. ReVoS offers VoIP service, which includes unlimited international calling to over 40 countries including the standard VoIP product offering for $24. 95 per month. They have also developed a VoIP product that works over a mobile phone that doesn’t require a broadband connection. This is geared to people of international origin who, by the way, have the greatest propensity to use cell phones of any demographic in the U. S. This niche makes sense since carrying long distance call traffic is an inherent strength of the VoIP networks. Also these customer groups are better reached through a niche strategy and would be missed by mass-market strategies. This market is comprised largely of people living in the U. S. who have moved here from other countries. These are tight communities where word of mouth can flourish and the value proposition is strong when saving people money on high cost international calls. This is an example of how a small VoIP provider can successfully compete against much more formidable competitors such as the Cable Companies and Vonage.
However, the future of the telephony industry and the role that VoIP takes still needs to be fully defined and there are many uncertainties. There is a long list of unknowns, which include such things as Google getting into Voice and whether Microsoft includes a softphone and VoIP service as a standard part of their operating systems. Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) is another technology wildcard that could change the shape of the competitive landscape. The overwhelming penetration of mobile phone service and mobile carriers’ ability to steal the show with a FMC offer is very real. This may be the competing technology that upsets the MSOs stronghold on VoIP. The question then becomes which bundled product offer is greater 1) Broadband and VoIP or 2) Mobile phone and VoIP. Another thing to consider is how Wireless VoIP (wVoIP) could change the competitive landscape and underlying telephony ecosystem if municipal hotspots and/or WiMax take off.
Whatever the future the holds, the economies of the telephony industry are likely to place a few large carriers in control of the majority of the market. People want simplicity in their lives and the winners will be those who provide the most seamless solutions to people’s basic communications needs. For smaller VoIP providers to survive and make profit, they will need to meet strong niche needs that get overlooked by the mass adoption strategy, have a well defined and differentiated value proposition (Recall ESPN Mobile’s problem), efficient operations to control cost and low margins, low churn in order to compensate for limited total average revenue per subscriber (ARPU) absent a larger bundled product strategy, and the ability to benefit from viral marketing within the target markets. With all of this in place, there is a chance of survival for small VoIP providers.