Jogja Ponsel

Undoubtedly, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has come a long way. However, businesses looking to switch to this low-cost alternative from traditional phone services will find out that the old mantra of “cheaper doesn’t mean better” still rings true.

It’s undeniable that VoIP is catching on as consumers look for a cheaper means of communication than traditional phone services. One report by Yankee Group Research stated that VoIP grew in the United States by more than 250 percent in 2005 with more than 3 million people subscribing to a VoIP service. It also projected that this figure will more than double in 2006 to around 8.4 million and swell to 28.5 million by 2009.

So with so many consumers adopting VoIP, why is this service still a bad choice for business?

The answer comes down to a very important factor: quality. While VoIP has made incredible advances since it was first conceived, many users are still plagued by echoes, dropped calls as well as huge delays, which make even a short call to a friend across town seem as if the call was placed overseas.

Unlike a traditional telephone network that uses dedicated circuits to reliably connect callers, the Internet was designed to allow multiple applications to share the same network. This shared information is sent across data lines in the form of packets. Each of these packets contains a small portion of data and makes its best attempt to reach its destination. Inevitably not all the packets that are sent out are received. This is something commonly referred to as packet loss.

For an application like e-mail or instant messaging, this is not a serious issue as the data being sent out is mainly text. However, for things like voice and video communication packet loss can have a major impact on the overall quality of what the person on the receiving end sees and hears.

To make matters worse, these packets may also be delayed if they hit any type of network congestion. These packets begin to stack up until they are either lost altogether or released like water escaping from a clogged sink. Imagine being in the middle of a conversation with someone when all of a sudden they go completely silent. After a very long pause you are flooded with several responses from that person all at the same time. The effect sounds as if someone pushed play on several different tape recorders at the same time. This is a very real scenario and is some of what VoIP users can encounter.

To alleviate this problem companies such as Vonage, Earthlink and Skype have suggested that VoIP packets need to be prioritized to ensure the most reliable service possible. This approach has several pitfalls that each company is trying to avoid. This biggest one would be the cost of ensuring that carriers give their traffic priority over another company’s. This fee would eventually need to be passed on to the consumer, at which point VoIP would no longer be seen as a low cost alternative.

The other big concern is network neutrality. In late June, the Senate Commerce Committee failed to approve an amendment that would ensure all Internet traffic is treated the same regardless of source or destination. Should a similar measure pass, the suggested prioritization of VoIP traffic would become moot.

So while VoIP may be growing at an incredible rate, it still has a ways to go before we see it in the boardroom.

Copyright © 2006 San Diego Daily Transcript.

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