There is a new hype in town and it is called VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). With application in both business and the household, VoIP has come of age and is set to change the face of the telecommunications industry. VoIP means making telephone calls using Internet technology. VoIP means you never have to pay more than the cost of a local dial-up call again. If you have a permanent Internet connection, you can now phone your friend across the road or in Holland for free. And since a month ago (1 February 2005) we have the government's blessing to do this. Here's how it works...
A normal telephone line packages your voice in analogue format to send it across the wires to the recipient. VoIP encodes the analogue package into digital format, sends it across the wires and decodes it on the other side before delivering it to the recipient. This means greater efficiency as the digital package is smaller. Lines can thus cope with higher traffic volumes than before.
Chances are that you are already making VoIP calls any time you place a long-distance call. Phone companies have long used VoIP to streamline the traffic on their networks. By routing phone calls through a circuit switch and into an IP gateway, the bandwidth required is drastically reduced. Once the call is received by a gateway on the other side it is decompressed, reassembled and routed to a local circuit switch.
The advantages of this technology are significant. The digital format can be better controlled. It can be compressed, routed and converted to a better format. A digital signal is also more noise tolerant. The technology is not new. It has been around since 1995. Ten years later, this new kid on the block is ready to play and causing quite a buzz.
Of course, one would need a moderately fast computer with a good sound card, a set of speakers and a microphone (or, even simpler, a headset) to do this. The software is available for download (for free) on the Internet and the better services, e.g. Skype, are pretty reliable and very easy to use. In this, the most basic use of VoIP, the recipient of your call would need to have downloaded and installed the same software. Scant requirements for free telephony, what?
This is all very well for the private user, but would it work in business? The advent of broadband availability on cell phones implies that the businessman with Skype on his laptop can use the service anywhere he goes. As long as you have a headset / microphone, you can place calls from your laptop anywhere in the broadband-connected world. The virtual office has just become yet again more cost effective and powerful.
However, the greatest application of VoIP is still in the traditional office-with-doors. It seems clear that VoIP promises significant improvement to the bottom line in the form of cost saving, especially in areas such as inter-branch communication. Neither are South Africans unfamiliar with its use in business. A survey conducted by World Wide Worx in December 2004, indicates that over thirty percent of South African businesses may already use this technology and further predicts that this figure will rise to eighty percent by the end of 2005.
Is it as simple as downloading Skype? Roman Hogh, Product Development Manager at Mweb Business, says not. "There are two main concerns when it comes to VoIP and business – reliability and resistance to change," explains Hogh. It takes a superior technological backbone to ensure high voice quality and complete reliability.
Obviously, any voice package passes through several transmission centres on its journey between sender and recipient and the quality of delivery is only as good as the worst link in the chain. With a product like Skype, the quality of these links is not guaranteed. While the home user might be perfectly willing to put up with the occasional breakdown in return for the savings on the phone bill, business cannot afford this luxury. Secondly, people are used to operating phone instruments and, as intuitive as programs like Skype are, they still require change management in the business environment.
These considerations require kicking VoIP expertise up a notch to ensure a seamless integration of technology as well as consistent reliability, and will probably require engaging a service provider such as Mweb Business. The idea is to either use existing data cables or, alternatively, a virtual private network set up by your service provider, to enable the use of VoIP. By fitting ATA's (analogue telephone adaptors) to the telephone lines or the PABX system, normal telephone handsets become VoIP enabled. The ATA allows you to connect a standard phone to your computer or your Internet connection for use with VoIP.
Pulling in the services of the professionals further ensures that the quality of service can be guaranteed. This way the whole operation becomes outsourced, saving time and money in terms of planning, project management, implementation and human resources, not to mention headache tablets. Of course, this process does not come free but Hogh suggests that if the communication bill between two centres exceeds R2 000, the potential cost savings make the exercise decidedly worthwhile.
It seems a safe bet that South Africans will embrace VoIP. After all, we are a cost conscious nation and have never shied away from change. We seem to have a penchant for technology in particular. But industry players warn that there is also a dark and dribbly side to VoIP and it is called SPIT (Spam over Internet telephony).
SPIT is like e-mail spam over your telephone line and operates like this: your VoIP enabled phone rings, you rush to answer, only to hear a thirty second voice-recorded, unsolicited and unwelcome advertisement. VoIP could allow such messages to be sent to thousands of addresses within minutes or seconds – a (rather dreadful) 'new and improved' system for telemarketing in the twenty first century. In the latest race between good and evil, international players like Qovia of Frederick, Maryland, are already filing applications to patent technology intended to thwart SPIT. All is not lost.
SPIT or no SPIT, VoIP represents an exciting development on the playing field of information technology and connectivity. In the opinion of this writer, the benefits still far outweigh the disadvantages. VoIP is here to stay. The progressive march of technology, just like evolution, is inevitable. Resistance is futile.