VoIP - Where to start?
VoIP is the technology behind sweeping changes in what we have known as telephone service. For most of us the 120+ years of telephone service has meant that consumers and businesses paid for telephone connections to a network that interconnected around the world linking telephone service providers. The telephone service providers and government agencies controlled the rates to interconnect and then to connect parties together.
In the mid-1990's VoIP technology started being adopted by existing service providers, new telephone service providers who were born of VoIP technology, and various Internet Service Providers of telephone or voice services over the Internet. This rapidly spreading revolution has adopted the name of VoIP to describe a myriad of alternatives.
In reality users of telephone services should have little concern about the use of VoIP itself, just as users did not need any understanding of traditional telephone service technology.
We offer two different tracks of information below. The first is about the role of the PC and Skype, in particular, in voice communication. The second track below is a more general and comprehensive summary of the technology and the variety of solutions available today.
Track 1
Using Your PC and Skype for Talking on the Internet
Talking Over the Internet for Free
What You Need to Talk using Your PC
Why Use My PC or Skype to Talk?
Integrating Skype into Your Life with TeleVoce
Track 2
VoIP Overview
But what choices are now available?
What does the PC have to do with my phone?
And background about how we got here.
And what does TeleVoce have to do with all this?
And the telephone network you know.
And what is the core technology all about?