the digital voice revolution, or how VOIP is taking over the home and business

VOIP sends voice signals through Ethernet cable or the Internet rather than traditional phone lines. Both businesses and individuals can benefit from this new technology by adopting VOIP phone systems.

You no longer need to contract a local phone company to talk make calls across the world. This new technology brings some exciting new features to phones which can now store digital information about who you are calling, or even transmit video so you can visually see who you are talking to.

Many companies have popped up offering VOIP services through consumer Internet connections. They offer individuals unlimited international and local calls for a much smaller monthly fee than a traditional phone service would. Of course call quality is sometimes dependent on the broadband connection, so at times, like when you are streaming video from YouTube, the call quality will suffer.

In general VOIP phones can do everything an analog phone can do, but there are a few exceptions. The biggest has to do with the 911 service, which tries to locate a caller when you dial in order to send you the the local department. This does not work over VOIP yet, so subscribers are required to pay for a separate 911 service.

Another minor hiccup when moving from analog to digital phones is that old phones don’t have the necessary parts to be plugged into the digital lines. However if you want to use your old phone rather than upgrade there are a number of different adapters you can buy.

VOIP is not just for the home. Large businesses are abandoning there analog phone systems for newer VOIP systems because the additional features can have a huge impact on employee productivity. IP phones can store company phone directories that are managed by a central server.

Video Conferencing is also available to VOIP systems which have made remote meeting possible for businesses. Consequently there is much less need to fly employees across the country for meetings and has saved companies thousands of dollars.

One thing is certain in both the business and consumer worlds, digital communication is the future. It is rapidly outpacing traditional analog communication. It would not be surprising if analog phones went the way of beta-max in the not so distant future.