VoIP46228

Be leery of your VoIP phone system in case of emergencies. 911 services may not be available to you or will be limited. You should put local emergency numbers by or on your phone in case you have a problem until the providers get this sorted out this fall. The FCC has been after VoIP providers to fix this problem and just recently extended the deadline. But for you and me, that means we have to be careful in emergencies or be left stranded trying to dial 911.

Providers of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone service have been told by the FCC to warn customers of potential problems of using 911 as an emergency number. The FCC told providers they should obtain acknowledgements from their subscribers and if they didnt, then they should turn off their service.

The VON coalition, a group of VoIP providers which include AT&T and MCI, were concerned of what would happen to their customers if they were cut off. Some portion of the subscribers typically wont respond to a request. Is it in the publics best interest to disconnect these people?

There are about 1.7 million VoIP subscribers nationwide and this cut off from the FCC could have potentially disrupted service for 100,000 people. The FCC issued this decree in May after a woman was unable to get 911 help to save her dying daughter.

The FCC ordered all the providers to have587 full 911 service by November 28th.

Heres the quote from the FCC:

Specifically, the Bureau announces that it will continue to refrain, for an additional 30 days -- until September 28, 2005 -- from enforcing the requirement that VoIP providers obtain affirmative acknowledgements from 100% of their subscribers that they have read and understood an advisory concerning the limitations of their E911 service against those providers that meet the reporting requirements established below.

In addition to satisfying these reporting requirements, to be eligible for this extension, providers also must have filed a report on or before August 10, 2005 in accordance with the Bureaus July 26, 2005 Public Notice. The Bureau will evaluate the sufficiency of the updated reports filed by interconnected VoIP providers and take subsequent action as necessary.

If you dont get anything from this article but this: Post all your local emergency phone numbers by your phone. Do it today. Emergencies arent scheduled.

Stuart Simpson http://www.voip-telephony-review.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stuart_Simpson

5C8

// posted by voip40591 @ 11:49 PM 0 comments

Professional web conferencing is a powerful tool in company meetings and is the preferred low cost conference technique in many organizations today. Web conferencing is used by business organizations to reduce costs of meetings and travel expenses. Professional web conferencing helps to save time and money with online meeting solutions. One can present, demonstrate or teach, and also interact with customers, colleagues and partners across the world. Professional web conferencing can be done using a computer and an Internet connection.

Web conferencing can increase important communication through immediate association, document sharing, video sharing and presentations to large audiences with the help of slide shows. Two or more individuals can conduct a meeting over the Internet using this technology. Common applications of professional web conferencing include software demonstrations, product launches, marketing seminars, sales presentations, employee orientation and training, staff meetings, human resource broadcasts, product launches, new product training, shareholder meetings and distance learning.

Basically, anyone can conduct a professional web conference -- all that is needed is a computer with a Java-enabled browser, a phone and an Internet connection of 56 kbps minimum. It helps people to stream audio/video, use web-based chat 57Etechnology, share documents or use Voice over IP (VoIP). Web-casting is a type of web conferencing where a live event is recorded and streamed over the Internet, or archived for viewing after some time.

Professional web conferencing software may be purchased from a reseller. One can also work with a full service vendor, who will provide the software as well as the planning, marketing and production of a specific event. This helps to execute the process effectively.

Web conferencing software does not excel at everything. There is no single software ideally suited for every situation. The world of software is rich in variety, and a choice of good professional web conferencing software is available -- each with its own strengths and weaknesses. A careful analysis will help to choose the software best suited for a specific application.

// posted by voip40591 @ 11:40 PM 0 comments

Throughout the early days of voice over protocol, Voip softswitches have become the most crucial element of this communication technology, which serve as the key enabler of Voip transmission service delivery.

Voip Softswitch is by no means a straightforward out-of-the-box switching gear. It is a system which comprised of multiple single elements that adds to the overall functionality of the whole Voip backbone.

There also multiple add on supplementary tools which create greater functionalities of a given Voip softswitch. Since the principle function of signaling and media control is the same for almost any types of Voip softswitch, you can compare different types of such devices from different vendors by supplemented add-ons they come with.

The Voip softswitches have been the key enabler for Voip switching technology as well as the driving force behind the IP telephony industry. As such, to keep up with the demands of increasing support as well as the need for ways to drive down cost, its pretty encouraging to see how Voip softswitches has evolved into a profitable revenue-generating tool on a carrier network.

[+] Optimal Network Management

Most carriers need to keep5A8 their cost low and margin as high as possible in optimizing their traffic exchange. These Voip softswitches come into picture with its intelligent routing capabilities which are based on their cost to quality ratios, load and other criteria in real time. Such tools are known to bring forward a profitable margin of 30%

[+] Variety of business models

One business model generated from these Voip softswitches is by offering Voip exchange services, where potential customers may buy or sell telephony minutes from multiple Voip providers.

Another viable business model is leasing Voip softswitch partitions to Tier 2 and Tier 3 operators which do not have their own Voip infrastructures in place. These small operators may use the leased softswitch capability to resell minutes to customers.

Today, Voip softswitches have become the important part of Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) scenarios. This can be seen by the increasing number of mobile service providers who are offering cheap Internation Long Distance (IDL) calling.

The convergence of the wireless and wireline domains has opened up a new and exciting ways to serve to the Voip customers where the use of Voip softswitches has paved a way for further development of new IP based services.

Additionally, carriers will continue to use softswitches to maximize the efficiency of their networks today and will definitely rely on them as the FMC has brough4B3t a new wave to the Voip market tomorrow.

// posted by voip40591 @ 6:29 PM 0 comments

The movie Extra Terrestrial (ET) coined the phrase phone home and each year Americans look for more cost effective ways to do just that. The past 10 years have seen the development and growing popularity of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies to achieve5A8 cost savings over the traditional circuit-switched telephone networks. The two dominate technologies used for VoIP are: (1) the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and (2) Peer-2-Peer (P2P). For business and educational institutions SIP VoIP solutions have produced substantial savings. For home voice users, however, SIP VoIP is still value challenged.

A typical circuit-switched landline phone costs about $19.95 per month (plus tax). The good old American landline phone should be graphically depicted beside the word reliable in the dictionary. Not only does it keep working, even when all electrical power fails, but it can even provide you with a light to dial with. At $15 dollars per month SIP VoIP is still value challenged due to the lack of full support for E9-1-1 emergency services and of course the reliability issues inherent with using a real time application over a best effort network like today's Internet. Although few VoIP articles still reference Internet Request For Comments (RFC) 3714 IAB Concerns Regarding Congestion Control, the technical challenges associated with VoIP are widely known. Further, even with the recent dubious edict by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that VoIP service providers will provision support for E9-1-1 within 90 days, this still leaves the reliability issues unresolved. The use of adaptive rate CODECs to prevent congestion collapse is a swell i5A8dea if it applies to my neighbors service but not my own. Using adaptive rate CODECs to elicit voluntary user preemption has no appeal in the modern world. Technology is supposed to be getting better and it is clearly not better that users receive disconnects or degraded service quality in order to constrain network bandwidth consumption.

Quality of Service (QoS) has been the four letter word of the Internet for a very long time. Yet, we know that real time applications such as video and voice are a mismatch for best effort service models. Cost savings are important, but not if they require users to accept backward technology leaps. After 9/11 the United States should have begun standardization efforts to insure that VoIP QoS levels would be equivalent to circuit-switched networks, especially where emergency E9-1-1 calls are concerned. The recent FCC order only requires that E9-1-1 call center traffic be properly routed. It does nothing to insure QoS of the connection once the call is completed.

As for SIP VoIP in the home, there is too little incentive for savvy consumers to part with more of their hard earned communications dollars for an industry offering that simply does not meet the needs of the user. Until something concrete can be done to move SIP VoIP forward, service based on P2P such as Skype seems to be the only sensible choice on the kitchen table. Why should home users pay $15 or 579more per month for less reliable communications than they already have with their land line? Skype gives users the ability to experience best effort voice over the Internet for FREE. Could this be the reason why more than 125 million copies of Skypes P2P software has been downloaded? And for the occasions where interconnection with the existing circuit-switched telephone networks is required, Skype offers a very competitive 2 cents per minute interconnection rate. With Skype you can talk for 12 hours interconnected to the phone system for the same cost as a basic rate SIP VoIP service.

Until genuine changes are made to support SIP VoIP QoS there does not appear to be a convincing or compelling reason today for users to choose anything other than P2P VoIP services such as Skype to render Internet best effort home phone services.

You can read the complete article and view associated graphics online at: http://canon.org/VoIP_Phone_Home.html.

2005 Peach ePublishing, LLC

// posted by voip40591 @ 6:20 PM 0 comments

VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol. It is another name for Internet telephony and often known as VOIP Internet telephony. VO5A8IP refers to a process in which audio conversations are routed over the Internet. In case of traditional telephones, voice data flows over circuit-switched transmission lines. But in case of VOIP, this data flows over a packet-switched network.

Those protocols, which carry voice signals over the IP network, are known as VOIP protocols. VOIP costs less than a traditional telephone. One of the reasons for this could be the utilization of a single network for carrying voice as well as data. Networks which remain underutilized can use VOIP without incurring any additional cost. It lets you make lots of long-distance calls without paying any additional amount.

There are certain advantages of VOIP Internet telephony over traditional phones. One of the major advantages is that your calls can be routed to your VOIP phone wherever you are. Just get your VOIP phone connected to the Internet and you can get all the important calls you might have missed if you were using a traditional or a cellular phone.

However, quality is still an issue as far as this technology is concerned. This is because of the probability that your data packages might not be delivered in a particular sequence. There have been efforts to address this issue, and the results have been positive. The VOIP Internet telephony market got a major boost after broadband and Internet access providers started marketing them.

They are offering subscrib510ers opportunities to make and receive large numbers of calls through VOIP Internet telephony by connecting an analog telephone adapter (ATA) to the Internet connection. Many companies are offering unlimited calls to certain destinations without incurring any additional cost.

// posted by voip40591 @ 5:40 PM 0 comments

Voice over IP (VoIP) technology, or IP telephony, is simply a system for transmitting5A8 telephone calls over data networks, such as the ones that make up the Internet.

The efficiency, flexibility and cost savings of VoIP will be taken advantage of by a growing number of personal and corporate users.

In this report we will look at the history, growth, flexibility and advantages of VoIP based systems over traditional public switched networks, (PSDN)

Let's look at why VoIP will change the way we communicate forever.

The Disadvantages Of Traditional PSDN Networks

With PSDN calls are made using circuit switching techniques.

PSDN simply means that an individual call uses a dedicated path for the total duration of the call.

During a telephone conversation of this nature only about 50% of the bandwidth is used at any given time.

The reason for this is a call consists normally of two people, one person listens and one person talks, which reduces the bandwidth.

This is further reduced as there are natural pauses in conversation such as pauses between words, people thinking, pauses for breath etc. The connection is of course reliable for voice transmission, but its drawback is that, it is very inefficient in its use of bandwidth.

This has kept telephone costs relatively high until now, but VoIP provides the solution:

A more efficient use of bandwidth.

The Advantages Of VoIP

Voice over IP, (VoIP), is a way of converting the analogue signals when5A8 using a phone, to a digital format (across a network) and then back into analogue when it reaches the receiver.

In a VoIP network, digitized voice data is highly compressed and carried in packets over the IP network.

Using the same bandwidth, a VoIP network can carry many times the number of voice calls as a switched circuit PSDN network.

The net result of this obvious.

VoIP can result in huge savings on the amount of physical resources required to communicate by voice over long distances. It does so by providing a far more efficient use of bandwidth, one of the fundamental drawbacks of traditional telephone networks.

There is of course, much more to VoIP than just sending the packets over the Internet.

There is an agreed protocol for how computers find each other and how information is exchanged in order to allow packets to flow between users, there is also an agreed format, (called payload format), which covers the content of media packets.

VoIP A Total Global Telephony Solution

VoIP allows us to use a single high-speed Internet connection not just for voice but, video, and data communications.

This is known as convergence and is one of the primary drivers for corporate interest in the technology.

The benefits of convergence are obvious:

By using a single data network for all communications, it is possible to reduce overall costs of communication for users.505

A VoIP service provider can be located anywhere in the world; a person with Internet access is not geographically restricted in their selection of VoiP service providers.

Lower costs for you and everyone

This competition enables low communication costs for anyone no matter where they are in the world.

// posted by voip40591 @ 5:30 PM 0 comments