Another way of communication: VOIP

By Lina Al Dana

Imagine a world with no communication. Can you?

Let’s not be selfish and think only about ourselves and how difficult it’d be for us not to use our cell phones, or exchange emails with our long distance relatives. Let’s also consider businesses that NEED communication in order to keep everything running smoothly. Would businesses be able to survive if they can’t send emails, faxes and make phone calls? I bet every business would either suffer a big setback, or collapse. Whether we want to admit it or not communication plays a big role in the success of a business.

A lot of people choose emails over long distance phone calls in the past decade or so. No more big bills at the end of the month. A relief, isn’t it? But we both know that emails are definitely not as personal as phone calls. Expressing yourself in an email can be harder than speaking your mind over the phone. Also, if you’re looking for a fast reply, emails definitely will challenge your patience.

Businesses save a lot money by replacing (long distance) phone call with emails. But sometimes the situation is too urgent, or important to just sit and wait to get a reply via an email. Let’s be glad there’s a solution for this.

A little in between

What if we mix emails with phone calls? What would we get? We’d definitely get a winning combination: VOIP (Voice Over IP) VOIP services convert your voice into a digital signal that travels over the Internet. If you are calling a regular phone number, the signal is converted to a regular telephone signal before it reaches the destination. VOIP can allow you to make a call directly from a computer, a special VOIP phone, or a traditional phone connected to a special adapter. VOIP can turn a standard Internet connection into a place where you place phone calls
for free. The fun part here is that by using internet to make phone calls, you are bypassing the phone company (and its charges) entirely.

Voice/data integration is important to enterprise network designers. They’re interested in so-called ‘soft savings’ associated with reduced maintenance costs and more efficient network control and management.

Real cost savings are sufficient for deployment of voice/data integration technologies. However there are added benefits, which will become more evident in the future. As applications evolve, organizations will gain increased user productivity from the integration of voice and computer applications. As voice/data integration continues, the line between voice and data applications will continue to blur. For example Unified Messaging systems are now available that combine voice mail, email, and fax messaging into a single convenient system. With these advanced systems, users can have email read to them over the phone or can add document attachments to voice mail. UM solutions are increasingly accepted in the corporate environment. The aim of deploying UM solutions is to enhance workflows and improve processes as well as services.

At the enterprise level, VOIP offers a big range of possibilities and advantages. VOIP has the ability to transmit more than one telephone call down the same broadbandconnected telephone line. This can make VOIP a simple way to add an extra telephone line to a home or office.

Also, new application such as virtual call centers allow call center agents to be distributed anywhere within reach of the data network, while still receiving the full suite of call center functions and features. VOIP is location independent, only an internet connection is needed to get a connection to a VOIP provider; call center agents using VOIP phones can work from anywhere with a sufficiently fast and stable Internet connection.

But is it safe? VOIP is internet-based. Viruses, worms and hacking are words associated with internet. Is it a big risk when using VOIP? Hacking and viruses are very rare when it comes to VOIP and VOIP developers are working on VOIP encryption to counter this.

Besides the obvious potential risks we just mentioned, let’s not forget VOIP is also susceptible to all the bugs normally associated with home broadband services. Some broadband connections may have less than an outstanding quality. If IP packets are lost or delayed at any point in the network between VOIP users, phone conversations can become distorted or lost because of transmission errors.

Some kind of stability in Internet data transfer needs to be guaranteed before VOIP could truly replace traditional phones. VOIP definitely promises and delivers many solutions.

With VOIP you can receive calls over the computers rather than using a traditional telephone instrument, and you can provide ‘blended contact center’ to support Web user questions with electronic chat capability and email between voice calls. These capabilities go far beyond simple costs savings and will ultimately make organizations much more effective and profitable. If you’re asking yourself whether you should give it a
try, ask yourself this question: Why not? There’s nothing to lose after all.