VoIP: emerging technology transforms businesses: the Internet allows for an inexpensive way to make long-distance calls, but there are drawbacks.

• Author: Stong-Michas, Jennifer

One of the major players in the telecommunications market would have to be VoIP. Voice over Internet Protocol (IP) has changed the way in which people and businesses communicate. Known by other names such as Internet telephony or IP telephony, VoIP has made its way into homes and businesses all across the country, and Alaska is no different.

By using an Internet connection to pass voice data using IP instead of using the standard public switched telephone network, one can avoid long-distance telephone charges. This is one of the driving factors behind its popularity as the only cost associated with it, after initial system start-up costs, is the Internet connection charge, which is a routine cost of doing business anyway.

By harnessing the power of the Internet, one can use VoIP to do some pretty amazing things. "Today we have huge global IP networks for data that dwarf the traditional phone networks in terms of scale and capacity," said Martin Taylor, vice president of technology strategy for Metaswitch. "With VoIP, we can use these data networks to carry voice as well as data, and this brings a raft of compelling benefits, including lower costs and lots of interesting new capabilities that help us make even better use of the telephone."

This transition toward a single network being able to provide both voice and data communications is the main premise behind the movement better known as convergence. Convergence is the blanket term that helps explain the converging of voice and data onto a single network.

Understanding what the technology is, and where it came from, is the best place to start in grasping what this technology truly is about.

IN THE BEGINNING

VoIP has been around for quite some time, in technology terms that is. Products supporting the technology first began to hit the market roughly 10 years ago, though in actuality VoIP has been around as long as the Internet has been.

"VoIP was introduced to the masses in 1995 and marketed to individuals in an effort to make free long-distance PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone calls over the public Internet," said Mary Ann Pease, vice president of corporate communications for Alaska Communications Systems, better known as ACS. "1996 saw the introduction of various VoIP service providers and the Microsoft Netmeeting Windows application, which was initially released with voice conferencing features and later added videoconferencing. During this period, VoIP industry standards began to emerge laying...