VoIP Providers Revolutionize Phone Industry

8 years ago (2009), Australia had already more than 300 VoIP providers, most of which have offices in the country’s major cities and large urban districts. These days, regardless of where you live, you will have a good number of choices for the VoIP services you want.

Most of these companies offer options of getting the needed hardware from them (to avoid problems) or the choice of bringing your own that you had bought from some retail stores or competing providers. This is over and above the many plans they have for you. 

How does it work?

It had been since the 70s that the technology had been developed and it was only 20 years later that the computer novelty of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) became a household service. How it works is simple.

Every time you make a call, your voice is converted into a stream of data. Instead of sending this over the phone network, the data stream is made to travel over your broadband Internet connection.

The data packet is labeled with its destination address (the person you are calling) and moves through the Internet the same way a web page or file will download.

Re-assembled data

When they get to their destination, the packets are re-assembled and converted back into sound waves (the voice you hear). When this process happens simultaneously in two directions, you have a phone conversation.

If the person you are calling is also using a VoIP service provider, your call will remain in the Internet during its whole journey. If you are dialing a conventional phone, the call is carried as far as possible over the Internet before being handed back to the relevant phone network.

Mostly, the VoIP services usually come with an allocated landline phone number that allows other people to call you. Here, the call is routed to the nearest handover point (this is the point of presence or POP). Then, this will travel over to the Internet to your VoIP phone or computer.

Costs

With VoIP, low costs are your biggest benefit. Because VoIP service providers avoid carrier phone networks, their charges for calls are very low. If you are calling from the same VoIP service, most likely the call is free.

On VoIP, local and national calls are not time-based, but are usually offered for a single per-call charge. This is possible because the call is carried over the Internet to the local area of the person called before it is handed over to the phone network. (The phone carrier treats it as a local call.)

International calls are typically charged in increments of cents per minute (which is still very cheap). Some VoIP providers Queensland even offer “eat-all-you-can” international calling plans in some countries.

Features

Aside from the cheap charges, many VoIP providers have other features that are essentially very advantageous. The reason is that VoIP calls are essentially a stream of data and can be stored in so many different ways.  

Some of these include email alerts if there’s a message, caller ID, caller blocking, call diversion and even 3-way calling (mini conferencing). Some free VoIP options include Skype, Google Talk and Mobile VoIP.

VoIPproviders Queensland are truly revolutionizing the phone industry these days.

Telephony - A Broad Overview

Telephony is the umbrella technology associated with the sending and receiving of voice, fax and other information between distant parties. Historically, it is associated with the telephone, the familiar hand-held device we use that has a transmitter (for sending) and a receiver for receiving the same.

With the advent of computers and the transmission of information in digital form over phone systems, the use of radio was also added to the systems mix. The distinction between telephony and telecommunication had become more difficult to distinguish of late.

In a technical context, it is a system of equipments and in the sending and receiving information (speech and others) with or without the use of wires. Lately, this has also been used to refer to computer hardware, software, and network systems that do functions done by telephones before. (It is now frequently referred to as Internet telephony or VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol).

Internet telephony

Through the use of the Internet rather than the old telephone infrastructures, internet telephony Melbourne became a reality after years of speculation. With the fact that access to the Internet is available at local phone connection rates, the international or long-distance calls is expected to be less expensive (compared to traditional call arrangements).

Depending on provider companies and the places where they are available, new services that were not available before are now practiced (or about to be initiated) in phone systems. This includes normal voice calls through the Internet which will have the prices of local calls.

This low cost also applies to the sending and receiving of fax transmissions through a gateway point on the Internet at major urban centers in the world.

Digital telephony

The phone system started its evolution when transistors were developed, followed by the amplification and circuit switching. This went all the way to the development of computer-based electronic system.

With these, PSTN (public switched telephone network) evolved towards automation and digitization of the audio transmissions and signaling.

Since the 60s, digital electronics, through the digital core network, have replaced the old analog transmission and signaling systems. This is the provisioning of the telephone system and services. Later, much of the access networks have also been digitized.

Benefits

In the advent of the digital era, the telephone system has improved many aspects of the network. These include such advantages as the network’s load capacity, quality of service and lowered costs. The analog telephone networks have been upgraded with digitized transmission carrier systems.

These were designed to support the basic voice channel. Although digitization had allowed wideband voice on the same channel, the improved quality of the wider analog voice channel did not meet a large market in the PTSN.

With the computer telephone integration (CTI), the phone system had become more sophisticated in its services, in quality, and in many other peripheral aspects that we took for granted these days (sending and receiving fax, voice and data calls, phone directory services, caller IDs). This gives rise to the automated office nowadays.

All in all, telephony Melbourne in many urban centers and cities had gone several strides further in making progress in the business of communications since then.

Office Phone Systems - Helping Run a Business

The advent of the Internet and its many related developments had slowly encroached into the older office phone systems of many companies. Fortunately, the time-tested voice communications still bring in the critical element of success in business, notwithstanding the loud calls of other systems and their cheaper costs.

These days, people still have faith in the secure ways of communicating through secure and steady phone systems for company offices. A dedicated PBX in the business can still bring in a bunch of competitive advantages for your company compared to some telecommunication systems that have yet to be tested.

Practical benefits

In an office with its own telephone system in place, the valuable extras of making it easier to manage your business and keep track of meetings and important clients may not look much but they are all important.

These days, the most modern systems already have in their package many features that include voicemail, caller ID, and automatic call forwarding. The main advantage that is not so obvious is that all your workers share the same voice resources.

With a phone system in place, the workers can transfer calls to one another which can definitely help in the smooth running of business within the office. (A worker who goes from his table to another just to answer a call wastes time and resources that can be used on other office work.)

More advantages

A phone system in the office, no matter how basic, can professionalize some things within your working group. You can program some music (or better, a sales message) for clients who are on hold. When a customer calls and you are not around, the system can inform the caller how to reach other departments or persons to leave a message to.

Phone systems have their list of important services that can make it easier to conduct business transactions. These include caller ID, voice mail, call forwarding, conference calling, call taping, muting, frequent number storage to create quick-dial directories and automatic redial.

Call tracking

One important feature of a reliable office phone systems is call tracking, an umbrella term for the ability to see who is using your phone in making outbound calls. This includes tracking the performance of your sales department in tracking times of calls, lengths, the recipients and the callers.

This is an important feature where you can examine the patterns of the calls for a specific department, or even a single employee.

Conference calls

One of the more important features of a reliable phone system is the ability to conduct conference calls. When a party cannot make a physical appearance to a meeting, that party can still attend the meeting with his virtual presence.

It saves money on travel and accommodations as well as saving potential loss of productivity because the absence was prevented.

Upgrades

The better office phone systems usually have provisions for future upgrades that are less costly and more reliable than the older system that had been upgraded. These systems are the best present-day versions to acquire or maintain because of the chance to modify itself to a better version.