VoIP vs Landline for Business
Voice over Internet Protocol has made its mark in the industry of communication. Many are wondering if that would be the best thing for their business, well I am here to say YES, YES YES. By implementing VoIP in your business will help to decrease cost that would normally incur through landline.
Most businesses are paying a lot of money for a typical landline with limited to no features and all that for same amount they can get VoIP with a lot of features and benefits. With this VoIP your business communication will be much clearer due to the high-quality audio. Some of the basic features offer by a VoIP: Voicemail, Call waiting, Call forwarding, Caller ID, Unlimited local calling.
Keep in mind that although this technology is great, your business should always have a landline account just in case it runs into internet issues; after all it is Voice being transfer over Internet Protocol. To implement VoIP a business would need a High-Speed internet connection.
You as a business owner will have to decide really what will work best for your business. It may come down to Cost vs. Benefit.
Monthly Costs are lower: Anyone that has used VoIP for business or personal use can testify that the monthly bills are lower. And also you will get more value for the money that you are spending because some of the packages include features with no additional fees.
Best Calling Feature: All VoIP Service providers provide massive calling features for one set price.
More Portability & Scalability: Portability is essential to a business because sometimes unforeseen circumstances call for change of location. For instance I work for a company where we need to move people’s phones all the time and each time we move the phones we don’t have to trace any cable and punch any cable on the patch panel or make any changes. Being able to take your phone just about anywhere that has high speed internet is a very important feature.
One of the great advantages that VoIP has over landline is installation. It requires a lot of resources and it’s very expensive when you have to install a landline service whereas if you choose to implement VoIP it will cost you less. The VoIP market is very competitive therefore will make it easy for you to find cheaper deal that will work for your business. For Landlines, you don’t have that many options therefore you must pay what they want you to pay.
this is my take on voip vs Landline.
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Thanks for writting very informative VoIP article. Please let me elaborate more on VoIP. Voice over Internet Protocol has been around since many years. But due to lack of sufficient and affordable bandwidth it was not possible to carry carrier grade voice over Internet Protocol. But since the arrival of low cost internet bandwidth and new speech codecs such as G.729, G.723 which utilizes very low payload to carry carrier class voice it has recently been possible to leverage the true benefits of VoIP. G.723 codec utilizes only 6 Kbps (Kilo Bytes/sec) which is capable of maintaining a constant stream of data between peers and deliver carrier grade voice quality. Lets put this way if you have 8 Mbps internet connection, by using G.723 codec you can run upto 100 telephone lines with crystal clear and carrier grade voice quality. I am also a user of VoIP and have setup a small PBX at home. Since I have discovered VoIP I have never used traditional PSTN service.
Dear readers, if you have not yet tried VoIP I suggest that you try VoIP technology and I bet you will never want to use the traditional PSTN phone service ever again. VoIP has far more superior features to offer which traditional PSTN sadly cannot offer.
Also It has recently been possile to carry Video alongwith VoIP by using low payload video codecs. I cannot resist to tell you that by using T.38 passthrough and disabling VAD VoIP can carry FAX transmission, but beaware FAX T.38 passthrough will only work when using wide band protocols such as G.711, a-Law and u-Law.
By using ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) which converts VoIP signals into traditional PSTN you can also using Dial-up modems to connect to various dialup services. I wont go in to the details what VoIP can offer, to cut my story short VoIP is a must to have product for every business and individual.
How VoIP Works
When we make a VoIP call, a communication channel is established between caller and called party over IP (Internet Protocol) which runs on top of computer data networks. A telephony conversation that takes place over VoIP are converted into binary data packets streams in real time and transmitted over data network, when these data packets arrive at the destination these are again converted into standard telephony conversation. This whole process of voice conversion into data, transmission and data conversion into back voice conversation takes place within less than few milliseconds. That is how a VoIP is call is transmitted over data networks. I hope that now you understand basics of how a VoIP call takes place.
What are speech codec’s and what role codec plays in VoIP?
Speech codec play a vital role in VoIP and codec determines the quality and cost of the call. Let me explain you what exactly VoIP codec’s are and how they work. You may have heard about data compression, or probably you have heard about air compressor which compresses a volume of air in enclosed container, VoIP codec’s are no different than a air compressor. Speech codec’s compresses voice into data packets and decompresses it upon arrival at destination. Some VoIP codec’s can compress huge amount of voice while maintaining QoS which means use this type of codec will cost less because it will consume just a fraction of data network. Some codec’s are just not capable of encoding huge amount of voice they simply consume huge amount of data networks bandwidth hence the cost goes up.
Following is a list of VoIP codec’s along with how much data network bandwidth they consume.
* AMR Codec
* BroadVoice Codec 16Kbps narrowband, and 32Kbps wideband
* GIPS Family – 13.3 Kbps and up
* GSM – 13 Kbps (full rate), 20ms frame size
* iLBC – 15Kbps,20ms frame size: 13.3 Kbps, 30ms frame size
* ITU G.711 – 64 Kbps, sample-based Also known as alaw/ulaw
* ITU G.722 – 48/56/64 Kbps ADPCM 7Khz audio bandwidth
* ITU G.722.1 – 24/32 Kbps 7Khz audio bandwidth (based on Polycom’s SIREN codec)
* ITU G.722.1C – 32 Kbps, a Polycom extension, 14Khz audio bandwidth
* ITU G.722.2 – 6.6Kbps to 23.85Kbps. Also known as AMR-WB. CELP 7Khz audio bandwidth
* ITU G.723.1 – 5.3/6.3 Kbps, 30ms frame size
* ITU G.726 – 16/24/32/40 Kbps
* ITU G.728 – 16 Kbps
* ITU G.729 – 8 Kbps, 10ms frame size
* Speex – 2.15 to 44.2 Kbps
* LPC10 – 2.5 Kbps
* DoD CELP – 4.8 Kbps
Switch to VoIP Today and you will never want to use traditional PSTN ever again.
Thanks
-Imran