VoIP
At the end of 2004, using the internet infrastructure to make voice calls was about the only thing that anybody wanted to talk about. Voice over IP (VoIP) hype had reached critical mass, and the offers of cheaper phone calls came thick and fast. Ultimately, that's what VoIP is all about. In most cases, it doesn't offer any significant technical or service improvements over the existing public switched telephone network, and in fact has some serious problems, such as the relatively poor reliability of the internet, variable service levels and the inability to make emergency phone calls when the power goes down.
But still, the chance to call anywhere in the world for free, or at least at local call rates, is enormously compelling. Will it fly in 2005? It's a distinct possibility. But it was also possible in 1997, when OzEmail launched OzEmail Phone, a VoIP service that ultimately failed. The technology has improved since then, however, and the relentless hype has at least made people aware of the possibility.
 |
| Hardware that bridges the gap between your existing phone and your internet connection are a good way to get into VoIP. |
Many PC Authority readers will probably think of voice over IP in terms of Microsoft Messenger/NetMeeting or Skype - a way to bypass tolls by using a 'softphone' application on your PC to talk to somebody else using the same application. Softphones are great, allowing effectively free voice calls to anywhere in the world, but the person at the other end has to be sitting at their PC and using a compatible softphone themselves for it to work. With Microsoft Messenger, you already have a working softphone built into Windows (just click on 'Start Talking' on the right of the chat window), and all you need is a $25 headset -- the same kind used for voice communications in multiplayer gaming -- to make it happen.
Service providers are interested in VoIP as a mechanism for entering the very lucrative telecommunications business without having to face the astronomical costs of building a telephone infrastructure. The well-founded belief is that the mass market doesn't really want to change its telephony practices, but is always up for cheaper stuff. Service providers plan to offer services that work, from a user perspective, exactly like regular phones. You pick up the handset, dial a number, and talk. It's only in the back end that VoIP does its thing, routing the voice messages through the internet and back through a voice gateway at the other end, bypassing the regular telephone infrastructure.
The key challenge for this kind of service is the interworking of VoIP and PSTN services, including phone numbers, so that people can call non-VoIP users and vice versa. Fortunately, the wide acceptance of SIP (session initiation protocol) and standards-based compression means that calls between different VoIP services and devices will generally work well.
 |
| We'll start seeing fully PC-based phones hitting the consumer market this year, as well as basic handsets that interface directly with the PC. |
Such services exist today. They usually require an internet connected box that your telephone handset plugs into, or a special IP phone (which looks and works just like a regular phone). These boxes and phones communicate over your broadband connection to a service provider, which routs the voice call over the internet to a local telephony gateway, which then puts the call on the PSTN. So if, for instance, you were calling Los Angeles, your call would be routed over the internet to an exchange in LA, where it would be put on the PSTN there (at the cost of a local call) and routed to its destination.
The problem with these services right now is the limited number of internet telephony gateways. The services work well and are very cheap compared to regular international phone calls, but aren't that effective if you want to call somewhere that lacks a gateway.
The other big area of interest for VoIP is for business PBXs, often linked with an external VoIP phone service. IP PBXs allow businesses to unify their phone and data networks, and to link their office PBXs together over virtual private networks. Calling the Melbourne office from the Sydney office over the IP PBX, for instance, would be effectively free (excluding data volume charges for internet access).
It's in this area VoIP is most likely to make its biggest splash in 2005, which will also hit the small and home offices. We expect that products like the Cisco Integrated Services Router will do big business this year. These devices provide both regular IP routing as well as act as an IP PBX and PSTN gateway. Just plug a set of IP phones into the Ethernet line connected to the router, and you have yourself a very feature-rich PBX - including voice messages, call waiting, conferencing and other features. Through the PSTN gateway, calls can be made to regular telephones outside the company. It's very compelling, not that costly to implement (although IP handsets are still too expensive, in the $100 per phone range) and likely to be the real driving force behind VoIP in 2005. But, if you're reading this magazine, you're one of those that'll be interested in this right now. Companies like Engin and AstraTEL offer hard phones that plug straight into your broadband modem and so long as you have a connection up and running, you can make calls to regular landline phones at considerably reduced rates.