0 The History of VoIP

In the early days of the telephone, we all had a cable which went to a telephone exchange. A telephone operator was then required to manually connect your telephone line to the telephone line that you wanted to call. Later on, they worked out how to get a machine to do this time-consuming task, but they were soon struggling to keep up with the large demands.

In 1963, the arrival of the touch tone phone allowed this switching and connecting of lines to happen digitally, rather than by person or machine. The first stage had now been set for the introduction of Internet telephony into the modern world.

In order for voice to be able to travel in digital format, it first needed a way in which it could travel. This happened in 1974 with 'Packet Network Interconnection' which broke the digitalized voice into little packets and sent them, one by one, down the line to be reassembled at the other end. While this was a more difficult process, it speeded up communications because of its speed over machine or human.

It took until 1996 before this packet technology became a commercially viable way for communication over the Internet. US communication companies didn't like this threat and tried to get internet telephony banned, but with no success.

By as early as 1998, 1% of all telephone calls were being made over the internet.

In 1999, SIP (Session Initial Protocol) arrived on the scene and soon became the standard for Internet communication, allowing different programs to talk to each other in the same language.

Commercial telephone equipment designed especially to make use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) grew in production in 2000. VoIP providers were now able to offer a realistic alternative to the ordinary telephone. By now, VoIP accounted for 3% of all phone calls and many popular programs soon introduced voice chat to their users.

In 2003, Skype launched its service, offering free Skype-to-Skype calls as well as cheap calls to telephone numbers around the world. Skype did not use the standardized protocol (SIP), but used its own protocol. In the same year, the first 'SIP Phones' were created, which behaved like a normal telephone, but connected through the internet. 25% of all calls were now made through the internet.

VoIP is here to stay, and with a provider that can satisfy your needs, you will get a good service and save big.

You can take advantage of low cost and free telephone calls, as well as learn more about VoIP technology and how it can benefit you, whether you use it to contact your family and friends, or wish to use VoIP for large business applications.

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