Internet Telephony

When the technology is used for calling land-line or cell phone, minimal charges apply. While, it’s free for PC-to-PC call, however, both parties must install the essential software.

VoIP has revolutionized the way we communicate, today. It has changed the telecommunication industry drastically. It is the most preferred way of dialing long-distance and international calls, and is the fundamental behind Internet telephony.

Internet telephony refers to the technology of integrating traditional telephone services with computer networks. It converts analog to digital signals, transmits them over the high-speed Internet connection and reconverts them into voice signal. How is this useful? It transforms a standard Internet connection into free phone calls via the VoIP software, wherein users are bypassing the traditional phone company and its charges absolutely. Above all the audio quality of the calls is excellent.

Since its inception Internet telephony has come a long way. With improved voice quality and ease of software installation, the technology is avidly used both by organizations and families. On one hand it is a convenient way to stay in touch with family and friends. While in the corporate world, where businesses significantly depend on long distance and international calls, Internet telephony is a cost-effective way to run organizations. Additionally, the technology allows users to check voice mail through the Web and attach voice messages to a desired e-mail.

VoIP service providers like One Communication offers free Internet telephony software and utilizes a prepaid system for call charges. Users dialing to a landline must keep monies on their account prior to proceeding. Irrespective of local, national or international dialing, the call charges levied is $0.2 cents per minute. And, if both parties use VoIP software, the calls are free.

Traditional phone companies may charge extra for over the top VoIP services like call forwarding, caller ID and voice mail. With Internet telephony these options are readily available at no cost. Industry experts predict that in due course of time Internet telephony will supersede the current workload handled by traditional telephone service.

With the rise of dot-telecoms, Internet telephony has widely reached the consumer markets, enterprise markets, and local and international markets. It has shown tremendous growth in Asian markets because of deregulations in voice and data communication market segment in conjunction with the advancement of VoIP technology.

Gone are the days when we had to keep our fingers on the STOP button of our mobile or landline phone while making international calls. Usually when making international calls we just wait to disconnect the phone as soon as our message has been passed across.

On the other hand, the receiver loves to keep on speaking as they are not the ones paying the telephone bills, the cost is on our head, so ultimately, what happen is that both will start speaking together and will end up understanding nothing.

This is where VoIP services also known as Internet Telephony come into picture. The best part of Internet Telephony is that a caller can make calls to a particular country from any part of the world at the same cost. For e.g. a caller can call Russia from India or China or even USA for the same amount per minute.

This is because the calls are routed through the internet, where as in a PSTN connection, he/she will have to pay a different call charge when calls are made from India/ China or USA to his hometown Russia. Moreover, the caller does not require to take any phone with him, the calls are made through the internet or mobile phone connection, thus avoiding any chance of calls being missed during international tours abroad.

Leading internet Telephony options

Skype – Skype users can make international calls to any landline or mobile number by paying hardly few cents per minute. The calls are crystal clear and infact if both the receiver and the caller have Skype installed in their system, calls are absolutely free of cost no matter which corner of the world both are living.

Gtalk – Gtalk is another internet telephony service provider. A caller has to download the software from Google (Gtalk is developed by Google), add credit to Gtalk account, dial the number from the softphone dialer displayed on the computer and than begin making unlimited calls without any hurry to disconnect the call. Gtalk, like Skype is free of charge from one Gtalk user to another.

Yahoo Messenger – Yahoo messenger is basically used for video chat and voice chat through computer. Yahoo to yahoo voice chat through internet telephony is free of charge. Incase the caller requires to call a landline or mobile number, he/she will have to purchase credit of $10 and than from the yahoo messenger dialer, call any international number using a headphone and speaker.

Freecall – Unlike the above three VoIP service providers, which are usually meant for voice and video chats, freecall is meant specially to make VoIP internet telephony calls to any part of the world. They have free destinations where calls are made free of cost to select countries. You can check more about their features on their official website.

Smart VoIP – Similar to Freecall, SmartVoIP is another internet telephony service provider. They provide similar features including voice clarity, free calls to select countries, call transfer etc.

For both the above VoIP service providers, the user will have to download the software from their respective websites, register with a user id and password, dial the overseas destination number with the international code and area code and begin to speak for unlimited hours.