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Cut your phone bill with VoIP
VoIP is a new way make phone calls. VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol and is the technical term for "Internet phone service." VoIP takes regular phone calls and zaps them through your high-speed Internet connection. VoIP uses regular...
Is My Home Ready for Voice over IP (VoIP) Telephony?
VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is finally reaching out to thousands of average homes to offer huge savings in telephone costs. Already popular with the corporate world, VoIP, sometimes called Internet Telephony, IP telephony, or Internet...
Is VoIP the 'Next Big Thing' in Telecommunications?
VoIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol has been simmering for the past few years. This year the market has heated up. Many large businesses have jumped on the VoIP bandwagon and have realized savings of 50-percent or more off their phone bills. VoIP...
VOIP Advantages and Disadvantges
Is your phone bill getting out of sight, like ours did? We were disconnected from Verizon, so we looked elsewhere. What we found was Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VOIP) services through our cable. So far, we have liked the services we have received,...
VoIP and local phone service
With VoIP technology entering the mainstream, it brings the
possibilities or huge profits for the companies that provide the
service. The current promise of cost savings is driving more and
more residential and business users to investigate...
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The Skype Approach to VoIP - A review of Skype
With internet usage reaching almost every country, and economic
class, and with its permeation throughout the western world,
applications designed to harness its potential in ever more
practical ways are constantly arising. One such application is
Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP), which continues to
challenge its own limitations. There are a few leading players
who are jostling for supremacy, including Yahoo! Messenger, MSN
Messenger, Skype, and Vonage.
Recently, there have been many converts to Skype, including
this reviewer. There are several factors that have influenced my
own personal move, but my primary motivations were innovation,
quality, and marketability. VoIP has always been an application
that is easily marketable, and Skype has added innovative
features that are quality-rich:
* SkypeOut, where you can use your computer to call ordinary
phone numbers all over the world. The global SkypeOut rate is
currently 1.7 Euro Cent (about 2 US cents or 1.1 pence) per
minute to more than 20 countries.
* SkypeIn, which is a virtual phone number your friends can
call. This is in beta testing at the time of writing this
review, but the 12-month subscription is available for € 30 and
3 months for € 10.
* Skype Voicemail, which lets you redirect calls to your
voicemail, is available at € 5 for 3 months or € 15 for the
year.
However, the most widespread application of Skype is PC-to-PC
calls. Any user can make free calls over the Internet to anyone
else who also has Skype. It is a simple wizard-based process to
download and use the application, and works via your broadband
connection with operating systems based on Microsoft Windows,
Mac, Linux, and Pocket PCs. All you need is a PC microphone and
speakers or a basic USB headset, and what you get is a
real-time, telephone-quality voice conversation with any PC
end-user in the world. I found the downloading to be extremely
simple and straightforward and imagine that anyone, no matter
your computer fluency will find it easy as well.
In addition to its ease of setup, the features of Skype are
really impressive. There is a facility to search the Skype
database, so that you are able to build a list of contacts. We
have used
Skype for Windows 1.4 for a PC-to-PC conversation
between Los Angeles and Mumbai (India), and there was no
recorded break in the half-hour call. The clarity was definitely
on par with a normal telephone, perhaps even better, with no
noticeable time lag. On subsequent calls between these
destinations and other US cities including Chicago, the quality
continues to amaze us, and the fact that Skype works in most
environments, irrespective of firewalls or NAT, widens its
reach.
So, what's the downside? A comparative analysis will help
clarify the situation. For a start, Skype does not offer as many
calling features as other service providers like Vonage. Then,
there have been question marks about the technical/customer
support offered by Skype. Another point where Skype loses out is
the quality of the SkypeOut package, where the calls made to
landlines are of inconsistent quality. One hopes that Skype can
add video chat to its repertoire in the near future, which will
place Skype on an equal standing with other free VoIP providers
like Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger, which already have
video capabilities. Skype is undoubtedly ahead of both MSN and
Yahoo in terms of voice quality and the real-time conversation
experience. On the other side of the spectrum, Vonage offers
feature-rich services and better customer service, although all
this comes at a price.
My Overall Assessment: Vonage is a better option than Skype for
traditional telephone users because Skype is totally
computer-dependent and caters to consumers who are "living out
of their computers."
The future has a lot to offer, and undoubtedly Skype will move
forward in its evolutionary process, and hopefully improve
SkypeOut and emerge successfully out of beta testing for
SkypeIn. However, for the moment, Skype is arguably the best
option for free PC-to-PC calls. Skype says that the "current
focus is to make the best voice-application on the
planet"--judging from user feedback around the world, Skype has
already gone a long distance towards that objective.
About the author:
Hamesh Brown enjoys writing about VoIP. For more information,
see this Skype review.
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| Voice over IP - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Encyclopedia article with background information, technical details, and the advantages and disadvantages of VoIP. |
| en.wikipedia.org |
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| Voice-Over-Internet Protocol |
| An overview of VoIP from the Federal Communications Commission. With news, FAQs, factsheets, and findings. |
| www.fcc.gov |
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| voip-info.org - voip-info.org |
| A wiki that covers VoIP software, hardware, service providers, reviews, configurations, and standards. |
| www.voip-info.org |
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| Howstuffworks "How VoIP Works" |
| Voice over Internet Protocol lets you make free long-distance phone calls using your computer. It’s essentially a phone network that uses the Internet ... |
| www.howstuffworks.com |
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| VOIP.ORG.UK - The UK resource for IP telephony |
| UK resource with the emphasis on small businesses and home users. Includes news, reviews, and forums. |
| www.voip.org.uk |
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| Packet8: VoIP Internet Phone Service Provider and Voice Over IP ... |
| Packet8 offers VoIP Internet Phone Service and Voice Over IP Telephony phone systems. |
| www.packet8.net |
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| Voip |
| 1-800-TRY-VOIP; Voip.com: do more, pay less. Use a broadband connection and your voip.com adapter to make and receive calls using a regular phone. |
| www.voip.com |
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| Vonage - Leading the Internet Phone Revolution |
| Use your high-speed Internet connection to make all of your phone calls with Vonage digital phone service. Plans start at $14.99 per month. |
| www.vonage.com |
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| VoipBuster - The Free* Calls Company |
| Free* phone calls with the VoipBuster. Call your online friends for free as well as a special selection of popular international destinations. |
| www.voipbuster.com |
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| The VoIP Weblog |
| OK, VoIP customers, the $24.99 a month party is just about over. ... The issue definitely kept me from switching to a VoIP service for over a year because I ... |
| voip.weblogsinc.com |
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| IVR Platforms / IVR Hosting / IVR Development |
| Get to market quickly with our A to Z VoIP platforms and services >> ... Our IVR and VOIP hosting, turnkey platforms, and developer services - powered by ... |
| www.voxeo.com |
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| VoIP |
| Connecting a business to a VoIP network doesn’t require a big, expensive integration overhaul. Quintum’s VoIP access solutions are designed with “integrated ... |
| www.tmcnet.com |
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| VoIP - Internet Telephony |
| voip, Internet Telephony Magazine. ... Internet Telephony is the leading VoIP magazine in the world covering all topics VoIP. ... |
| www.tmcnet.com |
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| Convergence & VoIP - Network World |
| The Convergence & VoIP research center is your source for the latest convergence and VoIP news, analysis and research links from Network World. |
| www.networkworld.com |
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| VoIP News - Enterprise, Carrier, Small Business VoIP Information |
| VoIP news, trends, experts, product reviews. Carrier and enterprise-class voice over ip. |
| www.voip-news.com |
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| O'Reilly Network -- What Is VoIP |
| Ted Wallingford looks at why the VoIP technology, the key ingredient in Vonage, Skype, Cisco CallManager, and a host of other technology products, ... |
| www.oreillynet.com |
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| What is VoIP? - A Word Definition From the Webopedia Computer ... |
| This page describes the term VoIP and lists other pages on the Web where you can find additional information. |
| www.webopedia.com |
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| Access >> VoIP | CNET News.com |
| EarthLink expands VoIP service. Eight more cities will get access to Net phone service that requires no ... Verizon sues Vonage for VoIP patent infringement ... |
| news.com.com |
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| Pages tagged with "voip" on del.icio.us |
| All items tagged voip ??? view popular ... SunRocket Internet Phone Service · save this. by dbrogdon to VOIP ... saved by 18 other people ... 3 hours ago ... |
| del.icio.us |
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| VoIP (Voice Over IP) Solutions - AudioCodes |
| VoIP, VoP Chip Processors and Voice over IP packets solutions developed by AudioCodes, leaders in the VoIP market for VoIP equipment and VoIP technology. |
| www.audiocodes.com |
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