In the early days of VoIP, the central issue facing the industry was whether voice quality could be effectively maintained using IP as the transport. Technology vendors, service providers and corporate network managers put a huge amount of effort into addressing this issue. As a result, VoIP is now an attractive alternative to conventional analog voice and the PSTN. more>

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offers a wide range of benefits to both enterprises and communications/network service providers. These include lower costs, unified management of voice and data infrastructure, and – perhaps most importantly – the ability to deploy a new generation of converged voice/data applications. more>

Service providers and their business customers are both eager to reap the benefits of VoIP and convergence. Service providers want to capture new customers, reduce operational costs and deliver new revenue- and profit-driving offerings - such as IP Centrex and presence-enabled conferencing. Business customers are seeking reduced costs, simplified management, and the ability to implement those new service provider offerings. more>

While network managers may debate about the hows and whens of network convergence, there is complete consensus on the whys. In fact, there is nothing speculative about these core benefits; they are already being experienced by early adopters of voice-over-IP, voice-over-frame and other convergence technologies. more>

Lack of enterprise-class capabilities. Low-end gateways are limited-use devices with little or no call routing capability. They are mainly intended for "second line" applications that supplement a separate regular phone line. Thus, they typically route all calls to a central point where the intelligence resides. more>

But organizations are finding it difficult to take the first steps towards convergence. Although it’s clear that this first step should be voice-over data – or, more specifically, voice-over-IP – most corporate decision-makers have serious concerns about such a major migration. These concerns include the quality of VoIP calls, the reliability of IP networks, and their lack of expertise in voice-over-data deployment. more>

New VoIP Technology Available TODAY Gives Calling Card Providers A Powerful Tool to Deliver Communications Savings and Value-Added Telecommunications Services. As voice and data networks continue to converge, the Internet provides calling card vendors with a powerful tool to increase profitability and deliver a broad range of value-added services. more>