▲VoIP has enjoyed a significant amount of hype in the marketplace. It was initially viewed as a way to get free phone calls over the Internet and has evolved to being viewed as the technology that will replace the legacy ▲PSTN. There have been literally hundreds of companies who have entered the market, the vast majority of which have failed. As with any new technology, there is a certain time required to grow the market and the growth of the VoIP market has been much slower than anticipated.
Even so, VoIP is real, it works, and companies that have been able to "hang in there" are starting to reap the reward. Literally hundreds of thousands of end users and a very large number of enterprise customers are now using VoIP as their primary phone service. Also, while many people do not know, a very large percentage of international phone calls going over IP VoIP networks today.
The work on VoIP is far from over, though. Many experts in the field
are still actively working to make improvements on the technology. Over
time, it should prove to be an adequate replace to the current PSTN used
around the world today and is already an adequate replacement in limited
deployments, such as enterprise environments where network
quality-of-service (QoS) is well-managed. It also works
extremely well for residential users who are willing to sacrifice a
little voice quality for significantly lower telephone costs. Companies
like Vonage
provide an excellent service to
such residential customers.
With that said, there is still a lot of hype. The technology does not always deliver the same QoS as the PSTN, so customers on networks that are not well-managed may hear distorted or poor quality audio. As a practical matter, nobody today can come to a person's home and help install VoIP service so the customer can use VoIP service on all phones in the house. This may sound like a small matter, but some people simply cannot or will not do the necessary re-wiring in the home. Finally, some service providers offer very different levels of service and have varying degrees of reliability. It's not uncommon with some service providers to see phone calls to a destination work one day and not the next. This fact is not the fault of VoIP, but due to the fact that some new, smaller VoIP service providers do not have the resources to provide the same level of reliability found in the older, mature, well-funded PSTN.
As service providers mature in their business, the quality on all fronts will improve. Until then, VoIP will remain a viable technology that should be approached with some caution. Users of the technology need to understand the limits and the potential issues before using VoIP as a replacement for current service. Residential customers should keep a mobile phone as a back-up "just in case" and enterprise customers should take the necessary steps to provide QoS on corporate networks.
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