New Trends in Telecommunications 1 - Voice over Internet Protocol

One of the most important innovations which is likely to cause a revolution in the area of electronic communications is Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). To explain it in a simple way it is making phone-calls over internet. I am sure that most of you know exactly what it means – making voice conversations over the messenger or using the slightly more elaborated version of this, Skype, are features which are used by many internet users. However, it is doubtful that Skype can be seen as a real competitor to the normal telephone. Obviously those people who are good with adapting to the newest innovations in the area of electronic communications will use it. However, this is a very small minority. The majority of people are not capable of understanding how these technologies work and what benefits they can bring to them (they are simply afraid of innovation). But there is another dimension to this problem: even those people who use for example Skype are very unlikely to bother switching on their computer to use it for making all phone calls, especially short ones; it is just so much easier to simply pick up the telephone and make a phone call. This is even more so for people who do not use Skype – they are not prepared to change their habits in this area, which have developed over many decades. This is just highlighted by the example that Skype is used very little by major international firms, even though this could save them a lot of money. But there are other applications of VoIP. The best example of this is the new product launched by the AOL in Germany – AOL supplies customers with a box which allows them to plug their normal telephone directly into the internet. So there is no need to use a computer to make a VoIP calls. However, this is just the tip of the ice-berg which is visible to normal customers. The VoIP technology is already used widely by the traditional telephone companies. This is especially in the area of making international telephone calls – there are many companies which are already carrying them over IP. As a result people do not even notice that instead of using traditional technologies, they make voice phone calls over internet. And this is actually predicted to be the future of the whole telecommunications sector. It is perceived that the traditional telephone companies will have to decrease their cots in order to stay competitive (in comparison with for example Skype). To do this they will have to replace the existing technologies with the ones where voice is carried over IP. So we are likely to see a similar trend to what the AOL is offering in Germany at the moment: our telephone lines will stay there but everything else we do not see will be VoIP; our phone lines will be connected to internet even if we use traditional telephone companies. And we might not even realise this! The good news is that this is all likely to decrease the amount of money we are paying for our calls. For calls made over internet the distance and the time do not play any role (these two are the most important criteria for calculating the costs of calls at the moment). The system is likely to move towards a system which is currently applied by most internet providers – a set amount per month and unlimited usage. Such a development would benefit every customer! In conclusion, there are many people who predict that the normal fixed telephony as such will disappear in the next couple of years. I do not share this view. I think that we will still keep on using our telephones because we are just so used to doing that. What will change though is the technologies used to transfer our conversations. And most importantly our telephone bills are likely to change as well – it will just become much cheaper to use telephones, especially for the long-distance calls.