About VoIP Phone Systems

There are many companies producing VoIP Phone systems for the use of businesses. They are extremely helpful in reducing the cost of communications to the company for both internal and external calling. Installing VoIP phone systems not only reduces operational costs, but also offers flexibility to the user, making it a top choice in today's markets.

What is VoIP Phone Systems?

VoIP phone systems are those systems that are connected to the Internet to offer telephone voice, fax and/or voice messaging applications to the user. VoIP is connected to the Internet and not the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

How does it work?

The first step in installing the VoIP system is that the analogue signal is converted into a digital format in which the signal is compressed or translated into an Internet Protocol (IP) packet, ready to be transmitted over the Internet. At the receiving end, this process is reversed. The system uses session control protocols to manage the tear down and set up of calls.

It also employs audio codecs, which encode the speech, thus allowing it to be transmitted over an IP network as digital audio via an audio stream. Codec is the term used for "coder-decoder". It is a hardware used to compress/decompress the digital audio data as per the audio file format or the streaming audio format. The use of codecs varies from purpose to purpose and often a range of various codecs are used at a time. Some implementations are based on the narrowband and compressed speech, whereas others are supported by high fidelity stereo codecs.

Using it in your Business

VoIP phone systems can be tailored to suite businesses of all sizes and can drastically reduce communication costs as demonstrated by the enormous amount of people switching to VoIP systems. Conventional phone services are available in VoIP systems too, that allow the phone companies to provide you with inbound and outbound calling with Direct Inbound Dialling. Most companies offer to make unlimited calls to the US and selected countries in Europe, Asia and Canada for a monthly fee, which works out to be almost free for any company.

VoIP systems are used in these applications as well:

o Skype - This is software that allows users to make calls over the Internet.
o SIP/RTP, which stands for Session Initiation Protocol/Real Time Protocol.
o IMS-IP Multimedia Systems.
o H.323 - This is another system used in IP Protocols, like the ones used in video conferencing.

Connection

There are three ways of connecting to the VoIP service providers:

o ATA - That stands for the Analogue Telephone Adapter, which can be connected to the existing telephone jack and the IP network. This is affixed to one location service and is generally offered by Broadband Internet Service providers.

o Dedicated VoIP Phones - These are phones that allow you to make VoIP calls without using the computer. They are connected to the IP network through Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

o Softphone - This is also known as the Internet Phone or the Digital Phone. This software can be installed on your computer to allow you to make VoIP calls without the dedicated hardware. Softphones are very advantageous, as they have a dedicated number which can be relocated to any location or country.