Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family
of transmission technologies for delivery of
voice communications
over
IP networks
such as the
Internet or other
packet-switched
networks.
Other terms frequently encountered and synonymous with
VOIP are IP telephony,
Internet telephony, voice over broadband (VoBB),
broadband
telephony, and broadband phone.
Internet telephony refers to communications services — voice, facsimile,
and/or voice-messaging applications — that are transported via
the Internet,
rather than the
public switched telephone network (PSTN). The basic steps involved in
originating an Internet telephone call
are conversion of the analog voice signal
to digital format and compression/translation of the signal into
Internet protocol (IP) packets for
transmission over the Internet; the
process is reversed at the receiving end.[1]
VOIP systems employ session control protocols to control the set-up and
tear-down of calls as well as
audio
codecs which encode speech
allowing transmission over an IP network as
digital audio via
an
audio stream.
Codec use is varied between different implementations of
VOIP (and often a range
of codecs are used); some implementations rely on
narrowband
and compressed speech,
while others support
high
fidelity
stereo codecs.
Adare Enterprises works with VOIP service providers to set up such systems
for small and medium size businesses.
We do not provide
VOIP services ourselves.
One of the VOIP providers we recommend is: