If you’ve been looking for a way to reduce your monthly phone bill without sacrificing features on your phone service, you might want to look into companies that offer phone service based on Voice over Internet Protocol technology- or VoIP for short. Voice over Internet Protocol technology is offered by several different companies including Vonage, Lingo, and SunRocket. While they all have different service plans, prices, and features; there are also a number of general features that they have in common. For example, all of them offer lots of extra features included in there service plans at no extra cost, and those service plans are generally competitive in price with what you’d pay for a normal land based phone line from a conventional phone company.
VoIP technology, as implemented by these companies, includes as standard features many of the things that you’d pay extra for in order to get from a conventional phone company. Voice mail, caller ID with name, last number dialed calling, call transfers, call forwarding, call waiting, and a lot more are all included among these features. Not only are all of these features included, but they’re also made enormously more flexible because their settings can be changed and used from anywhere by accessing your account online. For example, you can use any computer with an Internet connection to initiate call forwarding. This is a great feature for situations where you need to have calls to your home or office number forwarded to your mobile phone, but forgot to do it before stepping out the door. You can also often do things like turn off the ability to dial international calls or directory assistance from your online account in order to save money. Some services also allow you to access your voice mail through your online account or have it forwarded to your email. When one service forwards voice mail to your email account it does so with the actual voice mail message attached as a WAV file so that you can listen to the message right there on your computer. At least one service will let you block phone calls from certain numbers and or calls from numbers that don’t offer any caller ID data. Either of those two features are great ways to fend off telemarketers or admirers who are just too aggressive for your comfort.
While all of these features are extremely valuable, one thing that all VoIP services have in common, and the feature that was really the whole point of them to begin with, is the ability to make long distance phone calls without any long distance rates. This is possible because of the “Internet” in Voice over Internet Protocol. Essentially, VoIP technology streams phone conversations in both directions over the Internet in real time. This means that those phone conversations are treated just like any other media that’s sent over the Internet. Just like MP3’s, digital photographs, emails, and other types of document that inhabit the Internet, there aren’t any long distance charges for phone conversations using VoIP. Best of all, it’s completely compatible with the conventional telephone network so you can still talk to people who don’t use VoIP.
When it comes to saving money and providing the maximum number of extra features, VoIP technology is definitely worth looking into.
By: Julia Hall
Archive for September, 2009
What You Need To Know About VoIP Broadband Telephone Service
September 26th, 2009If you haven’t heard much about VoIP before now, you certainly will in the future due to its rapid emergence as a major communications technology. VoIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, and it basically is the ability to make telephone calls over the internet to either a receiving computer or telephone.
For years standard telephone lines have used a circuit switching network to transfer telephone calls, but VoIP technology uses something called packet switching instead where audio is converted into packets of data that are sent over the internet and reassembled on the other end by the person’s computer or telephone. If a high-speed internet connection is used, a conversation can take place that easily compares to a regular telephone call in sound quality.
All of this may sound like a very new technology, but in reality it’s not. Programs that make use of VoIP technology were springing up on the internet more than ten years ago, although they were much less capable than those that are available today. Also every year continues to bring higher standards of quality for VoIP applications, and it will no doubt be a viable technology for many years to come.
A good example of the use of VoIP technology is instant messaging programs. If you have used an instant messaging program that is voice enabled, where you can communicate by audio, video and chat, it is in large part due to VoIP. This is because VoIP is able to integrate audio, video, data, e-mail, and more simultaneously. Although most consumers will use VoIP for telephone calls initially, many businesses are already finding expanded uses for VoIP technology.
Several telephone companies are realizing the potential for VoIP services and so companies like Sprint, Verizon, AOL and others are now offering VoIP plans to consumers. One of the distinct advantages of buying a VoIP solution is that it costs significantly less than most standard telephone services. In fact, most service plans will allow you to make unlimited long-distance telephone calls on your VoIP plan for very inexpensive rates. And the subscription rates are usually free of many of the taxes and regulatory fees that often accompany your local telephone bill.
Another major advantage of many of the current VoIP subscription plans that are available is that they often include extra features such as call waiting, call forwarding, three-way calling, voice mail and much more. Quite often, these extra services cost more when included by your local telephone service, but VoIP plans usually include them at no extra charge. Another interesting side benefit is that many providers will allow you to select a new area code and phone number for your VoIP calls, so if you have family or friends in a distant town, they can call you for free on a number that is local to them.
Hopefully this information on VoIP technology will help you understand more about how it works and how it can be beneficial for you.
By: Jim Johnson
Experience the Pleasure of Cost-effective Communication With VoIP Technology
September 26th, 2009
Do you wish to cut down your monthly telephone bill amount?
Telephonic communication is the lifeline of the contemporary world. Be it communicating with near and dear ones or with customers/colleagues, telephones constitute an indispensable part of one’s life.
However, most of us are bothered by the (hefty) telephone bills that we receive at the end of the month (especially when we make long distance calls). This takes » Read more: Experience the Pleasure of Cost-effective Communication With VoIP Technology
