Voice T1 Line Advantages
If you or your small of big business
uses a voice T1 line, you probably know that you can call almost anywhere
in the world for free. The quality of those voice chats, however, varies
greatly and never approaches traditional phone calls. They are also hard
to set up and can often be defeated by even a basic broadband router. However,
you can communicate long distance
fast and cheap in comparison to using phone lines. If you are doing overseas
business, this is a very profitable decision for your company. It obviously
depends on the situation.
To make a call, you first use the companies built-in search
engine to find a friend. Once you have found a friend, simply right-click
on their name and select Call. The caller and recipient both hear a ring
tone and, once the recipient clicks on Answer Call, the call is initiated.
IM-based VoIP applications operate in much the same way.
Some voice systems use several different proprietary audio codecs to handle
audio compression. Depending on the amount of available bandwidth, these
codecs deliver bit-rates between 3-16Kbits/sec, which is enough for decent
sounding voice audio. Some companies also supports text messaging, which
is useful for copy/pasting text and sending it to the other call participant
in real time. Calls are encrypted end-to-end using 256-bit AES encryption,
which is nearly impossible to hack.
There is usually no perceptible lag time, which is impressive. That, coupled
with good audio quality, makes this a viable replacement for at least some
phone calls. Modem users, though, should expect some lag-time, simply because
of the latency built into dial-up connections. For that reason, we recommend
VoIP only when both parties have broadband.
Some people think that their PCs performance will drop when not calling,
because VoIP borrows cycles from a computer to route others' calls. However,
there is very little impact when not on a call, but connected to the VoIP
network. During a call, there is a maximum of about half of the CPU used
by the VoIP program.
Today, VoIP offers only point-to-point calls, though conference calling
is coming soon. It also lacks voice-mail support, which is an odd oversight
for a telephony application. The company plans to add the ability to call
landline POTS which is a plain old telephone service, phones and cell phones
in the future, but it has not specified when. It will work both ways, letting
regular phone users call your VoIP-enabled PC and vice versa. PC-to-PC VoIP
service will remain free, but support and other add-ons will probably cost
money.
