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.