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What is VoIP? A Full Guide for Understanding VoIP Phone Systems
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a proven technology that allows people to make phone calls over the Internet connection. Developed in 1995, it has evolved to become more stable and reliable with the development of broadband and turned into the go-to solution for more and more businesses when upgrading their phone systems.
What is VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol)?
Traditionally, legacy phone systems carry voice signals using analog phone lines so it requires the setup of circuit wiring to make and receive calls. Under this circumstance, a piece of specialized hardware equipment called Private Branch Exchange (PBX) is used to connect internal phone extensions to the public telephone network.
Rather than sending data packets over a traditional circuit-switched network, VoIP, the abbreviation for Voice over Internet Protocol, sometimes also referred to as IP telephony, is a technology that converts voice into digital signals that can be transmitted over internet digital data packets via your local area network/WAN/other infrastructure to enable phone calls. VoIP uses RTP (real-time protocol) to ensure that these packets get delivered timely. You can use either an ethernet cable or a high-speed WiFi connection for VoIP.
How Does VoIP Work?
As mentioned above, VoIP basically works by converting analog telephone signals into digital signals to facilitate telephony over the Internet. Now let’s dive a little deeper into detail into the process.
SIP Protocol and SIP Trunking
Voice over IP works by using protocol technologies and SIP is one protocol that enables VoIP. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a communication protocol for VoIP calls and other text and multimedia sessions, such as instant messaging and video. SIP trunking, based on the SIP protocol, is basically a service established virtually over your internet connections and provided by Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSP), eliminating the physical connection to a phone company.
Equipment You May Need in order to use VoIP
VoIP phone systems (PBX)
A VoIP PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is a business telephone system that facilitates phone calls over the company’s LAN or WAN data network rather than through the circuit-switched networks.
VoIP PBX is available in two deployment options – on-premises and cloud-based. With an on-premises voice solution, the hardware is installed and runs on-site at your office or data center while a cloud PBX system is delivered entirely over the Internet and managed completely off-site by a service provider.
VoIP phones or IP phones
VoIP phones, or IP phones, are the physical office phones that you can use with a VoIP phone system. Visually, they do not differ much from the traditional, stationary phones you find at your home or on your work desk. Because of this, it’s quite easy for employees to adjust to newer VoIP phones. The one fundamental difference is that they are internet-enabled, whether via WiFi or Ethernet. They are assigned IP addresses to facilitate calls over your network.
Mobile phones, computers, network-ready devices
In addition to IP phones, you can also access VoIP phone systems using your own mobile device, computer, and other network-ready devices with VoIP apps or softphone application installed. Today you can make and receive business phone calls anytime, anywhere using your own Internet-connected devices, without worrying about losing VoIP call quality. Employees are no longer tied to a desk phone and may use any device of their choice.
VoIP gateways
A VoIP gateway is a hardware device that converts traditional telephony traffic (analog or digital) into packets of data, allowing connections between legacy telephony infrastructure and IP-based communications, acting as a bridge between an IP network, the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), and the cellular network.
What Are the Benefits of VoIP?
Modern businesses enjoy using VoIP phone service over traditional telephone lines because they can get a lot more value than just improving corporate communications. Below are a few of the many ways VoIP benefits businesses.
1. Cost Savings
VoIP is a budget-friendly way to set up a business communications system. VoIP services could be based on a direct IP connection to your phone service provider, simply on your existing internet connection, or a combination of both. Therefore, it cuts down the cost of internal calls in your organization to virtually none, greatly reduces the expenses of external and international business calls, saving a significant amount of investments on purchasing traditional phone lines, installation, and ongoing maintenance.
On-premises and cloud-based VoIP systems are both cost-effective but do have some differences in terms of the cost. Though you need to pay fully upfront for an op-premises system, it protects you from the risk of fee increases and means lower monthly cost after expenses are covered. As for the cloud-based hosted VoIP services, you usually go with an OpEx model with more affordable monthly or annual fees and low initial equipment cost.
If your voice and data solutions are currently separate, you can save money by combining the two under one provider. In addition to the cost savings, you’ll also be able to consolidate both internet service and telephony support.
2. Easy to Install
Comparing to traditional phone systems, the installation and configuration of VoIP systems could be super easy. Traditionally, with a landline system,