Future Nine Corporation FAQ

ID #1026

VoIP=Voice over IP

Voice over IP is a technology allowing telephone calls over the public internet.

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What can I do with VoIP?

It goes way beyond that, but the most common use of VoIP is Internet Phone Service.

Yes- you can replace your traditional phone service with Internet Phone Service.

The biggest advantage of VoIP over regular telephone service is the price. It is far cheaper to provide a customer with Internet Phone Service than it is to provide them with regular phone service. This means the customer gets better prices too.

International Calls - since the international portion of the call gets delivered over the internet, it is possible for the provider to give customers prices as low as 90% lower than traditional phone operators.

Calling Cards, Callback, value added services - since VoIP software is extremely flexible, it allows many other uses aside from just phone service. Uses like Calling Cards, Callback, PBX, IVRs, and many many more are common.

There are almost no limits to what you can do with VoIP!

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How does VoIP work?

VoIP uses SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) packets to deliver your voice over the internet. These packets are in most cases delivered via the UDP (User Datagram Protocol) protocol (and not via TCP - a common misconecption). UDP allows the packets to flow uninterrupted without waiting for an ACK(nowledgement) from the receiving party. This is great for voice since it eliminates voice delays, but the downside is that packet loss will result in spotty voice.

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How reliable is VoIP?

VoIP is very reliable by itself. You are however completely dependant on your internet connection. If your internet connection is reliable you will have no problems. If your internet connection less than optimal, you might want to reconsider trying VoIP. Your choice of VoIP provider would impact reliability too.

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Quality - Voice quality over VoIP is almost the same (and sometimes better) as regular phone service. Different Codecs give different results, with G711 giving the best results (but highest bandwidth usage), and G729 giving the best results for a low-bandwidth codec. There are plenty of codecs out there but unless you know what you're doing we'd recommend sticking to these too, or G726 if you must. We'd avoid G723 at all costs. ;)

 

 

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