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Advantages of IP Telephony for the Residential Consumer Businesses have for some time now been utilizing voice over IP telephony through the building of converged networks. As VoIP technology matures including the network pipe grows ever larger, LANs that existed primarily for data transmission are being converted to handle all types of media based on the Internet Protocol. With a well established infrastructure of fiber optic trunk lines, wide area networks should carry much more traffic at much higher speeds than they could have in the early nineties. The next step in the evolution of networking for businesses large including small is 1 network that handles transmissions of data, video, including voice. The converged network. The same should now be said for the modern residential household. As more of us are building our own local area networks at home to connect our family members to each others data including appliances, broadband connections to the outside world have expanded our pipe to the Internet, giving us plenty of bandwidth to consider converging our home network with voice over IP telephony. But why switch? at the time 1 considers the services including costs offered by VoIP providers compared to traditional telephone companies, the reasons are compelling. First including foremost, the financial savings of talking on the Internet, as opposed to using the telcos copper lines, should be significant. In some cases up to 60%. the is best illustrated with long distance calls. As calls are routed over the Internet, they could indeed eventually be switched over to landlines, but not until they reach their destinations local switching station. To the telephone company, the looks like a local call including is thus free. Pretty much all VoIP service providers provide free calls within the U.S. including Canada, with some including Puerto Rico including even certain destinations in Europe. International rates are significantly lower than telco rates including many destinations are as low as 1 or 2 cents a minute. Rates may jump at the time crossing over to a cell phone network, but are still the lowest to be had. Different countries handle VoIP calls including rates differently. Panama taxes VoIP calls as do many other countries that have a nationalized telecommunications industry. Even so, International rates have never been as low. Its just much more cost efficient to route calls over the Internet. Much like the cell phone industry, most pure play VoIP providers such as Vonage or Packet8 provide various calling plans to suit your individual needs. NetZero offers 1 pertaining to the lowest plans with 100 minutes for $3.95 a month. Vonage has a 500 minute plan for regarding $15 including Packet8 has unlimited minutes for $20. Even the cell phone companies with their free in network calls cant compete price wise. Services provided by Vonage including others compare favorably to local phone companies. Voice mail, call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding, including 3-way calling are standard features with most providers, whereas a local phone company may bundle these features including charge for them. Local number porting allows you to transfer your existing phone number in most cases including premium features such as multiple phone numbers including toll free 800 numbers should be had for around $5 a month. Some services not offered by the phone companies are the virtual phone number, allowing you to have numbers in different area codes, including voice mail to e mail which lets you check your messages from a computer. In fact, many providers provide a soft phone, a software application that turns your laptop, PC or MAC, into a video/telecommunications center. Voice over IP Telephony may not be for everybody. There are some disadvantages that we could cover in the next article, Things to Consider Before Switching. But if you are tired of $80 phone bills, including of being nickled including dimed for every little add on, then VoIP is definitely a new consumer technology that you should look into.
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