E-Business
Issue No. 32 - December/January
VoIP- are we there yet?
by Adrian de Brenni
How do you decide if Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is right for your business, or for you at home, or both? This is a common question in light of the publicity of VoIP and the emergence of many offers for telephone calls and equipment using VoIP.
Internet Protocol is a method of transferring information over communications links such as broadband services. When voice is sent over these links it is called Voice over IP - VoIP. Any IP connection can carry voice, even a dial-up internet connection, but the quality and speed of the end-to-end connection will determine the quality of the voice. VoIP on a dial up is not good. Voice on a high speed broadband service can be great, but not always. Good quality voice calls on IP connections are often referred to as IP Telephony.
What's the attraction? VoIP allows you to make a 'phone call' without paying any more than you do for your internet service. If you don't exceed your download limit, the call is 'free'.
A high-speed broadband service is best for VoIP, but this is just the connection between you and your internet service provider (ISP). It doesn't guarantee that you will get a high speed continuous connection to the person you are hoping to talk to. To have a successful voice call the connection needs to provide continuous information transfer of at least 40 kilobits per second. This doesn't sound a lot compared to a 1,500 Megabit per second broadband service; but the requirement for continuous transfer means you don't want to share the connection with others on the Internet, and the 1,500 refers only to the download speed (upload is usually much lower). Voice calls are two-way and need continuous, equal speed in both directions.
I was recently asked by a small business how to improve the quality of VoIP calls. This business provides life coaching by telephone call consultations. The coach in Adelaide has a number of customers in Melbourne and they have bee...
