A Guide to the VoIP Telephone

The telephone has been already longer than any of us have been alive. And with the cellular telephone emerging over the last 25 years, you would think that traditional home telephones would soon be extinct. But not so fast. The home and office telephone is going over a massive makeover in the form of the VoIP telephone.

What is a VoIP telephone? VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. This essentially means that you use an Internet connection as a phone line. I find this particularly ironic because I remember a time early in the history of the Internet where you used the phone line to access the Internet! Immediately, this means savings for the home or business as you no longer need to buy both data network access and phone line access - instead, a VoIP telephone means that you can now use both over a data network - which has far more bandwidth, meaning you can use the data network for more things at the same time. If a phone line is a two-lane road, than a data network is a vast expressway.

The chief benefit for the VoIP telephone is the cost. Traditionally, phone lines were charged on a timely basis - in other words, the price of phone usage was calculated by the minutes used in a given billing period. This limited the amount of conversation you might have - too much and you're paying hundreds of dollars. This was especially true with long-distance calls. But there is no long-distance on the Internet, and therefore, there are no long-distance calls on a VoIP telephone. Calling around the world costs the same as any call down the street. Furthermore, data networks are not charged on a time basis, but rather in the data used. Frankly, the amount of data usage given by most Internet providers are more than one would normally use, and the VoIP needs such little data to be transmitted.

The VoIP telephone is still not perfect. As an emerging technology, there remain a few problems. Some complain about the quality of the connection and audio, but work is being done quickly to mitigate this deficiency. In no time, using a VoIP telephone will be no different than any phone experience you might be used to.

So if you're not ready to make your cellular phone your only phone line, take heart. A VoIP telephone is a great option to help keep phone bills down without eliminating the home telephone. And you can save several hundreds of dollars a year as well, all by switching from your traditional phone to a VoIP telephone.