The Pros and Cons of Using VoIP

The pros and cons of using VoIP

The VoIP is an abbreviated form of Voice over Internet Protocol. The VoIP is gaining impetus and is becoming the favorite of the telecoms. People are ready to jump on to the internet phone as it is more promising and much cheaper with efficiency of service. However, identical to all other emerging technologies, the excitement and publicity exceeds the reality. But VoIP is a promising novel technology that will transform our opinions about telephones. There is no doubt that VoIP is an attractive substitute to the conventional phone service, though there are few things to be set and to make it freely available for one and all.

Advantages of VoIP
People possessing broadband connection with cable or DSL can make use of VoIP and can avail the benefit of VoIP telephone service at low cost. The cost of connecting PC to phone is normally lesser than a conventional long distance call and a PC-to-PC call involves no cost to any other computer in the world. VoIP service providers charge a monthly fee and facilitate unlimited calls within a specified area, and with a reasonable additional charge for calls made outside the area. VoIP offers the benefit of portability to a traveler. If you have access to broadband connection and if they are omnipresent, you can easily continue to keep in touch with your friends, family members and business associates. Your VoIP service takes care of your phone coverage, roaming and long distance charges.
The facility of portability is facilitated for phone to phone VoIP services. Your VoIP provider will give you an internet phone number and you can carry your IP phone and plug it in any broadband connection and proceed with making your call. IP phones can be carried everywhere as they are light in weight. All the features expected in a traditional or cell phone service is obtainable with VoIP service. Services such as call waiting, voicemail, call forwarding, caller ID, three ways calling, and many more facilities are offered.
Disadvantages of VoIP:
The disadvantages of VoIP are emergency calls and power interruptions. The emergency calls can quickly trace the traditional phone call, but tracing a VoIP call is highly impossible. Even without power, you can attend the normal phone, but an IP phone, depends on the internet connection and stops working when there is no power. There are issues regarding VoIP reliability and sound quality. Similarly, like other data forwarded over the internet, email and various other documents are mailed on the internet through some scrambled network. Many times the data is dropped as they do not reach in time and becomes silent in the audio stream. To reduce the voice connection delay the data packets are dropped and this dropped data depends on the speed and distance of the connection. Similarly, if the networks have high traffic you may find more dropouts, especially during peak times.
However, with the growing popularity, VoIP will overcome the disadvantages in due course of time as they are constantly working to clear the bugs and very soon it can anticipate a warm response from the customers.