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VoIP 2.0 simplified

19 Jul 2012

Thanks to the internet, the world is changing around us. Suddenly, we find ourselves in immediate contact with each other and with any business anywhere across the world. We currently live in a user-centric communications environment and have access to the internet from our cellphones, from home and from the office. Are you using the internet to its full advantage; for instance, making quality voice telephone calls?

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP as it's commonly known, is the routing of voice conversations over the internet. You may be wondering what this means in terms of your actual telephone - you can access VoIP from an IP desk phone, a wireless IP Phone (similar to a cellphone) or from a telephone application loaded onto your cellphone, laptop or computer. It allows anybody, anywhere to use an internet connection as a telephone line with the quality of the call, clarity, real-time connection and cost-effectiveness being the main benefits. VoIP relies on bandwidth, so to appreciate the wonders of its features fully, a high-speed Internet connection is a prerequisite and, of course, a reliable service provider.

Reliability and quality

VoIP's best features are reliability and quality. Reliability means that as long as you are connected to the internet, you are guaranteed never to miss a call, wherever you are in the world. Quality refers to clarity of the voice calls. VoIP calls are so clear that the caller would think that you are actually in the same room!

There are many value-added services offered by reliable VoIP service providers today, such as voicemail facility, conferencing, speed dialling, call forwarding, simultaneous ring, call waiting, call return, anonymous call rejection, and last number dialled.

South Africa has various service providers who offer VoIP services and customers are advised to select their VoIP service providers carefully and insist on features like:

Uncompromising quality of voice with MOS scores (a measure of voice quality) of 4.2 or greater
Options of either hosted or onsite VoIP equipment
Provisioning the hardware to ensure consistent and reliable connectivity
Number porting services
Bandwidth enhancement with no loss of quality, no jitter and no packet loss

Service providers with a wide range of VoIP services, internet routers, IP phones and related equipment can facilitate the provisioning of VoIP services and help business owners set-up reliable VoIP telephony.

A few years ago, talking to a person halfway across the world was guaranteed to cost hundreds, if not thousands of rands. Now, with the advent of VoIP, this technology is dramatically cheaper, more accessible, readily available, reliable and, above all else, easy to use. Real-time business communications are enabled by clear quality calls. Switch to VoIP 2.0 - the next generation of quality VoIP services.