Utilities exploding on the
PC and corporate sectors.
Examples are net2phone, skype, dialpad, sipphone.
(links are on the right top corner) In addition to this traditional telecom companies like sprint, at&t and all
such telecom companies are offering unlimited calling to DSL based Internet
users for a monthly fee.
There are many advantages to the
internet telephony compared to the traditional calling. However the chief
among them is the cost of the service which is much cheaper than the
traditional approach. However voice quality and reliability issues remain.
Microsoft may be bringing Internet telephony in its new OS.
Messengers we discussed under this
section also has integrated calling of any phone from within the messenger and
Microsoft in its new upcoming desktop OS is touted to have VOIP built into
it.
That move has the capacity to move
world’s phone calling the PC from the telephone.
What will I need to make calls from my PC?
All you need is to
ensure that your PC is connected to the Internet, has multimedia capability
like speakers and microphone besides having something called a
'duplex' card. Then you will need a subscription from a PC-to-phone
service provider.
Who will
provide this service?
You will
need to buy time from an Internet service provider or a telephone company to
make national and international calls. Indian
ISPs are in a flurry to offer the PC-to-phone service along with the regular
Internet connection.
What are
the advantages of Internet telephony?
Cheaper
rates. Currently, while the price for a telephone call to the US is $1 a
minute, it could drop to 10 cents a minute or even lower! Even prices of
domestic long distance calls within the country will come tumbling down.
For
corporate houses too, Internet telephony applications can be used on
intranets to reduce phone bills drastically.
What are
the disadvantages of Internet telephony?
While the
quality of Internet telephony calls has improved over the years, the biggest
drawback of these calls will be a perceptible delay during conversation.
VoIP needs high bandwidth, something the ISPs are not in a position to
supply immediately. Unfortunately, India is rather bandwidth starved and
with implementation of VoIP, telephone networks and switches will get
severely clogged.
Conversation could also get garbled at times, as the Internet is more prone
to losing parts of a message than a regular telephone network.
