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Ip Telephony Vs. Voip

Knowing the difference between IP Telephony and VOIP will help assure that you maintain great call quality in using these new technologies. With that assurance you're on your way to obtaining the true strategic benefits of IP Telephony. This article starts you on the right path.

IP Phone System Concept
An IP Phone system uses the technology of “IP (Internet Protocol)”. This does not mean it uses the public Internet. It uses IP technology within the private data network of a business in a single location or across a private network. Although there is a difference between the terms “IP Telephony” and “VOIP” they are often used interchangeably.

IP Telephony on a properly designed, private network has the same voice quality as traditional phone systems. You can use it over your private data network to connect remote sites with multiple workers or remote workers in home offices. If you don’t have a private network between sites you can use the public Internet to access remote sites.

VOIP — Voice Over Internet Protocol
Although “VOIP” is often used to refer to IP Telephony as described below, it also refers to using the public Internet to carry voice traffic. When the public Internet is used, you (the user) don’t have the same control over the Quality of Service as you do over your own network. Therefore, it is possible for voice quality to suffer although with today’s technologies it can often be equally as good as your regular phone line quality.

IP Telephony
IP Telephony uses IP (Internet Protocol) technologies to carry voice traffic. Voice traffic is carried over your data network using IP technologies that carry your data. This has the following advantages:

* Seamless extension dialing between all your locations on your private network, or even over the public Internet, is relatively easy and much less costly than traditional means.

For example, imagine this: you have a high speed connection such as DSL or cable Internet at the home of one of your workers or at a small one, two, or three person branch office. You take a phone from your office and connect it to that Internet connection. That phone, located anywhere in the world, is now a phone on your office phone system with all your settings on your phone at the office. Someone calls your office and the call automatically rings your phone at your home or branch office. The caller doesn’t know where you’re located.

Or imagine this: you’re traveling and staying at a hotel with a high speed Internet connection. You have a “soft phone” on your laptop computer. This is a software phone that functions just like the phone on your office desk and actually ties into your office phone system. You can use a headset on your laptop or a handset that plugs into a USB port. The handset acts just like the handset on your phone at the office. You can now receive and make calls through your soft phone just like you’re at your office. Callers will ring through to your soft phone.

You can be located anywhere in the world and the person you call or calls you won’t know where you are. If you’re going to be away for an extended period of time, you may even want to take a regular office phone and set it up on your Internet connection. This arrangement makes use of IP Telephony for your office combined with VOIP using the Internet. IP Telephony makes all this easily possible at a lower cost than traditional systems.

* Enhanced contact center (call center) responsiveness to customer needs.

* Redundant phone systems with automatic failover over dispersed locations.

* Multiple cust&

#111mer service backup between locations in different time zones.

* Shared phone arrangements for time-split office/home-based and traveling workers.

* Eliminate long distance charges between your locations.

* Using one cabling infrastructure to carry both data and voice traffic instead of separate cabling infrastructure for each. This can have significant cost savings especially if you are moving your office or setting up a new office.

* Simplified system administration through a GUI (graphical user interface). You can make changes to your system that previously required your telephone equipment vendor to make the changes. Therefore, you can significantly reduce your maintenance costs.

* Easier moves of telephone sets. When moving from one location in your building to another, it previously required re-programming the telephone switch and physically changing some wires in the “telephone closet.” With IP Telephony as you pack up your desk supplies and plants, you also grab your telephone. In your new location, you simply plug the telephone into the Ethernet connection in the wall and then connect your computer to a jack in the phone that acts as a bypass for your data. All your personal settings move with you. Costs for moves are dramatically reduced.

* Software upgrades are much easier and can be performed by you instead of paying the telephone equipment vendor to do them.

There are many more benefits to IP Telephony but this brief overview should be enough to peak your interest to continue your investigation. You don’t need to make a total swap out of your current phone system. It is possible to gradually introduce it into your organization and interface it to legacy systems.
In addition to this brief explanation, we should further discuss the strategic business applications of IP Telephony. IP Telephony is the technology that all major phone system manufacturers are using in their newest systems. This is where they are investing their research and development dollars. Thousands of companies have already converted to it. There must be reason or two or twenty.

Ed Mass is President of Mass Strategic Communications, Inc. He has been a Telecommunications Consultant for over 13 years. He knows the industry and its development. He's written 24 articles on the strategic uses of telecommunications and the technologies that make up this ever changing field. He's in the consultant programs for the five highest rated phone system manufacturers plus others. These manufacturers cover more than 90% of the market.

He's made the most amazing discovery of his career with a little advertised offering by one of the top IP Telephony manufacturers. Through his industry knowledge and experience, he's recently obtained new, state-of-the-art IP Phone systems for his clients for no additional cost than their current monthly telecommunications expenses. This has saved his clients over $100,000 for companies with over 100 employees.

At the same time, his innovative techniques are creating multi-carrier redundancy for his clients as "insurance" against single carrier outages. Give him a call at 314-569-2222 or send him an e-mail at info@voip-telephone-system.com or visit www.voip-telephone-system.com for more information.

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