Opinion on why companies are selecting VoIP as cost saving tool. What risks are involved?

[lindas_98126]

What is your opinion on why companies are selecting VoIP as cost saving tool. What risks are involved?

[San]

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over IP networks such as the Internet or other packet-switched networks. Other terms frequently encountered and synonymous with VoIP are IP telephony, Internet telephony, voice over broadband (VoBB), broadband telephony, and broadband phone.

Internet telephony refers to communications services — voice, facsimile, and/or voice-messaging applications — that are transported via the Internet, rather than the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The basic steps involved in originating an Internet telephone call are conversion of the analog voice signal to digital format and compression/translation of the signal into Internet protocol (IP) packets for transmission over the Internet; the process is reversed at the receiving end.

VoIP systems employ session control protocols to control the set-up and tear-down of calls as well as audio codecs which encode speech allowing transmission over an IP network as digital audio via an audio stream. Codec use is varied between different implementations of VoIP (and often a range of codecs are used); some implementations rely on narrowband and compressed speech, while others support high fidelity stereo codecs.

Corporate use:

Because of the bandwidth efficiency and low costs that VoIP technology can provide, businesses are gradually beginning to migrate from traditional copper-wire telephone systems to VoIP systems to reduce their monthly phone costs.

VoIP solutions aimed at businesses have evolved into "unified communications" services that treat all communications—phone calls, faxes, voice mail, e-mail, Web conferences and more—as discrete units that can all be delivered via any means and to any handset, including cellphones. Two kinds of competitors are competing in this space: one set is focused on VoIP for medium to large enterprises, while another is targeting the small-to-medium business (SMB) market.

VoIP runs both voice and data communications over a single network, which can significantly reduce infrastructure costs.

The prices of extensions on VoIP are lower than for PBXs and key systems. VoIP switches run on commodity hardware, such as PCs or Linux systems. Rather than closed architectures, these devices rely on standard interfaces.

VoIP devices have simple, intuitive user interfaces, so users can often make simple system configuration changes. Dual-mode cellphones enable users to continue their conversations as they move between an outside cellular service and an internal Wi-Fi network, so that it is no longer necessary to carry both a desktop phone and a cellphone. Maintenance becomes simpler as there are fewer devices to oversee.

Skype, which originally marketed itself as a service among friends, has begun to cater to businesses, providing free-of-charge connection between any users on the Skype network and connecting to and from ordinary PSTN telephones for a charge.

In the United States the Social Security Administration (SSA) is converting its field offices of 63,000 workers from traditional phone installations to a VoIP infrastructure carried over its existing data network.

Benefits:
1.Operational cost
2.Flexibility

[Robert G]

The main risk is when your power goes out so does your phone service since it'll take down your router and modem. Your analog phone service has a government mandate that requires them to restore phone service asap for 911 purposes, this doesn't apply to voip. Voip also uses less committed bandwidth, this allows the provider to reallocate it for internet usage. Finally your phone company over those analog line has to provide power to allow those landline phones to function, there are several websites dedicated on how to tap this to use for low wattage needs such as night and reading lights.

[Gzus]

VoIP is great for cost savings because of the reduced fees for all calls. The other big things are the great features like soft phones, mobility, telecommuter access and integration to many programs like Outlook for example. You can technically get more calls across a trunk as well with the use of compression, like G729a.