VOIP VS CELL PHONES

VoIP vs. Cell Phones

VoIP vs. Cell Phones

Introduction

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) was constructed to transmit voice information via the Internet or other packet-switched networks. VoIP carries telephony signals as digital audio, typically reduced in data rate using speech data compression techniques encapsulated in a data packet stream. As is our usual practice in IT World, we'll take a quick look at where it came from, present a high-level overview of what it is all about, and offer some insight as to how it works (Prathima, 1998). Whereas, cell phones they first went on sale in the United States in 1983. By 1995, just 12 years later, Americans had 28 million cell phones. By 2008, they had more than 260 million cell phones. Some homes do not have a landline phone anymore. (Landline phones use a wire to link to the phone network.) People just use their cell phones, whether they are out or at home. The story is much the same elsewhere. In Africa cell phones are more popular than landlines. In 2007, the world had 3.3 billion cell phones. That means one phone for every two people. This number is an average. Some areas had few phones. Some had many. (Arminen, 2003)

Discussion

VoIP Vs Cell phone

The idea to use a network connection to transmit voice or audio (telephone calls) has been around a long time. Originally defined as part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET, predecessor of the Internet), VoIP got its start in 1973. From a historical perspective, digging into information about the ARPANET and how it split and evolved is interesting, although probably, not fodder for an enormous box office movie. One of the splits was into the DARPANET—the Defense Advanced Research Project. DARPANET was interested in a network with many redundant connections between computer systems that could provide a better chance to maintain communications in the case of war. Wait—maybe if Steven Seagal instead of saying, “I'm just a cook” said, “I'm just a VoIP developer,” nah, still would not make the movie of the week even on the SCIFI channel… (That's from Under Siege, for those who might not have seen the film).

Transmitting voice over the Internet has been available to general leading end users since the early 1980s. It was not until 1996, however, that a shrink-wrapped package version was available from Vocaltec. It came with caller ID and voice mail features. However, it did not have a gateway or switch to connect to the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS, or the old time analog phone system). Therefore, you could only talk to other Vocaltec subscribers. These days the Level 3 Corporation, uses a “softswitch” (their term) as a gateway between two networks, thus allowing the POTS connection. Think of the soft-switch as a replacement for the old hardwired switch-boards connecting you to any phone number. Level 3, if you have not heard of it, is a huge player in the Internet backbone business, connecting cities and countries ...