What are the advantages of VOIP?

• With a traditional telephone line or PSTN line you pay for the actual time usage. The more time you spend on the telephone talking to people the higher will be your telephone utility bill that you pay to the telephone service provider. Where as in the case of VoIP you can talk as much as you want and the only bill you have to pay is the regular internet bill which any way you have to pay to the internet service provider.

• On a regular telephone line you can only talk to one person at a time but in case of VoIP you can talk with as many people - who are connected to the internet - at any given time as you want. And this is only at the costs of your internet bill.

• And since you are already connected to the internet you can as well exchange data or audio / video with any one at the same time as you talk, which is impossible with the regular telephone line.

• Even though basic IP telephony and facsimile are the initial applications for VoIP, the longer term benefits are expected to be derived from multimedia and multi-service applications. For example, Internet commerce solutions can combine WWW access to information with a voice call button that allows immediate access to a call center agent from the PC. Needless to say, voice is an integral part of conferencing systems that may also include shared screens, white boarding, etc. Combining voice and data features into new applications will provide the greatest returns over the longer term. Videoconferencing also can be greatly enhanced.

Thousands of consumers are collectively saving millions of dollars by replacing or supplementing their traditional telephone lines with VoIP. Widespread adoption of broadband Internet service (cable or DSL) in the last few years though has in turn fueled a surge in the growth of much-improved personal VoIP.

To get started, you need an analog telephone adapter (ATA) to convert your voice into data packets. In most cases, all you have to do is connect the ATA to your broadband modem and a conventional phone, and you're ready to start making calls to any phone in the world.

Hope Ocampo is a freelance writer. To find out more about her articles and about VOIP, please visit href="http://www.voip-architecture.com">VoIP Architecture.