The telecommunications industry is what you might say as being 'overloaded with choice'. To the less initiated, this choice is so overwhelming it is almost impossible to decipher. The introduction of VoIP is the central reason for this confusion. If competition within the industry had not been considered high enough, certainly the introduction of VoIP technology has changed this. The landscape it seems has changed beyond all recognition.
So what can VoIP do for the unsuspecting consumer?
• VoIP can replace phone landlines. Households have the choice to replace their existing landlines for the cheaper VoIP service.
• Line access is not necessarily required through the usual 'jack' in the wall. Although this may be required for your desktop, certainly the wireless laptop can be used to communicate with another the other side of the world. Whether your laptop has built in microphones and speakers or head phones are required the need to plug into the 'jack' in the wall is not required.
• Mobile phones now have the ability to connect online. This facility means that cell phone users can take advantage of WiFi and make use of the VoIP access to make low cost calls.
• Although VoIP poses a wide range of security concerns, it is anticipated that this gap in the market will be filled with the necessary protection measures soon to be made available.
• Services such as web-based logs of calls and answering services online now do not need to be an expensive additional cost. Once the service is routed through the internet these services are simple to implement.
• Traditional internet messenger services like Yahoo and Msn now use VoIP as an alternative to texting and can offer multi chat service where by more than two people can talk to each other.
As the industry is so diverse, the telecom industries having integrated the many wide range of services, estimate the growth of VoIP from 12 million to 44 million by 2010. According to a 2008 study by BT Professional Services, almost half of all global IT organizations globally have installed or implemented VoIP into their infrastructure.
