Do you remember the days when long distance phone calls were so expensive people set timers to keep from talking too long? Do you remember 1982 when the Internet was coming into its own, and someone came up with the idea to use the Internet for long distance calls. It worked back then, but with today’s new technologies like high-speed ADSL links, Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP has come into its own. Service providers are taking advantage of the technologies to give their customers great products like the VoIP ADSL phone that offers long distance service at a low cost.

Early users of VOIP encountered voice quality problems like lags in the conversation and freeze frames while video conferencing. Remember modem connections that hogged the phone line and ran peak rates of 57 Kilobits per second?

VOIP today is a different beast. VoIP calls are no longer plagued by lost words. VoIP video conferencing runs smoothly. All made possible by high speed ADSL links.

Using the Internet to send voice and video is a complex process. The human voice takes up a lot of bandwidth and must be packed up for transmission, then unpacked at the other end of the link. Back in the 80s, VoIP was like pushing syrup through a soda straw. With today’s high-speed technologies like ADSL, VoIP is more like water at high pressure through a big hose.

The data communications industry has also banded together to develop standards. There is SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) to help start, stop, and manage data exchange sessions over the Internet, and lots of ongoing work to enhance VoIP call and sound quality.

To make high-speed service available to a wide range of users, various levels of service are offered with prices that match. The advantage here is that different types of users, from a student at a home computer to a business with many users can choose a service they can afford. There is also a wide range of speed options, but typically start at 128 Kilobits per second for a low-end DSL package to 8 Megabits per second for ADSL.

New and faster technologies mean new and faster products and services. Communications service providers offer a wide range of products. There are phones that take advantage of ADSLs ability to share the telephone line so that a device can be used as both VoIP and land line phone, a good combination that insures a line is always available for phone calls. There are many offerings and configuration of ADSL modems that have enhanced security and various options for connecting phones. Wireless phones and dedicated VoIP ADSL phones are also available. The promise is quality phone service at a lower price than traditional telephone service providers, and the service providers are delivering.

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