The advent of high speed internet and clear voice communication network has driven many businesses to deploy Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in place of traditional PSTN services that is anything, but free. With VoIP, what you get is a more cost efficient communication solution and instant global communication reach.

VoIP, also known as “Voice over IP” or “IP Telephony”, is the routing of digitised voice signals over the internet or through any IP-based network.

The speaker’s voice is captured and converted into a digital byte stream, compressed using an appropriate algorithm to reduce the data rate, packaged into small data pieces, wrapped by the protocol headers and finally sent as IP packets over the network to its destination. At the destination the process is reversed. Packets are unpacked, data is decompressed, and converted into analog signals for speakers, handsets or earphones.

Using VoIP, users can simply call anyone connected to the Internet via a broadband connection using an IP phone or a computer with a plugged-in headset running the software. When both partners use VoIP, the cost of telecommunication is only the existing internet connection cost and not hefty IDD rates. Calls where only one partner is using VoIP and the other partner is connected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) are not free, but are generally much cheaper than prevailling IDD rates. The savings on international calls can be huge.