VoIP Superguide

• Paul Zucker
• 12 March 2008
• Page 1 of 3 : single page

Photo credit: Getty Images

Traditionally in Australia having a phone service meant signing up with Telstra. Telstra would then run a copper phone line from the street into your premises. This PSTN line offered untimed local calls, but all STD, international and mobile calls were charged by the time of the call. It also cost a rental fee for each line. Phone charges were and are a substantial part of the operating expenses for most Australian businesses.

Over the past few years we’ve seen other telephone service providers and billers offering not only discounts on phone services, but new ways of bundling services to make them more attractive and affordable.

One of the big buzzwords this year is VoIP. It stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, but put simply it means telephone calls that use the internet to largely or completely bypass the traditional phone system, yet work seamlessly with that system. There are other names for VoIP such as Internet Telephony or proprietary names such as iPrimus’ Lingo, but they all offer a subset of features from a large set of VoIP capabilities.

When the telephone was invented in the late 19th century it was a simple analog system. It was basically a carbon microphone connected to a distant earpiece via a pair of copper wires and a battery. This continued until late in the 20th century when the phone companies began to digitise everything within the system. This had many advantages, but the main ones were that they could fit many more calls into a cable, the calls could go great distances without degradation and it was easier to route the calls. To the telephone user this digitisation was not only transparent, but in fact improved the service.

Yet for all that, the copper wires running between the local phone exchange and your premises have been basically unchanged, yet they still attract increasingly higher rental charges. Have you ever heard of the power company charging you a rental for the electricity cables in the street?

In case you’re already wondering about the quality of a digitised phone call, remember that ALL mobile phone networks in Australia use digital technology. Your analog voice stops at your phone and doesn’t get turned back into an analog signal until just before it feeds into the earpiece of the receiver’s mobile phone. And of course CDs and DVDs are digital.

There are different ways to transmit the digital phone signals, but they all tend to do the same thing. The analog signal feeds into a CoDec which converts the audio to a much more compact digital signal. This digital signal is split into small packets of data which are then sent over the network, reassembled into a data stream and then decoded by the CoDec. The system usually injects a tiny (usually imperceptible) delay which helps ensure the received data stream is in tact and free of dropouts. There are various tricks that make you feel comfortable using a system with these slight delays. For instance you hear your own voice locally in your own earpiece (called sidetone) but you don’t hear your voice echoing back from the other end. Remember, this is exactly the sort of system you’re used to with a mobile phone.

Early VoIP

In the early 1990s, few people had internet access. These were the days of the old dial-up modems which were limited to speeds that were a fraction of today’s broadband speeds, yet it was still possible to pass a digitised voice and even a low quality TV picture between two modems connected by telephone. In effect a videophone. (Isn’t it strange that the videophone has never really taken off, yet there’s no technical reason why it couldn’t be popular?)

In fact, these two modems were using a voice telephone circuit to carry the digital signal (converted to a sound or analog signal for the journey). It was technically possible to fit five parallel voice streams onto the circuit that would normally take just one analog voice.

Before long these early experiments developed into practical VoIP applications. Perhaps the best known is SKYPE. At first it was a program you ran on your computer that had internet access – either dial-up or broadband. The computer ran the CoDec and with its sound card, and a microphone headset allowed free calls between users, via the internet. Over the years this has greatly expanded and now Skype users can dial PSTN phones (for a nominal charge) and even take calls from them. You can also replace the sound components with a simple telephone handset that plugs into the USB port on the computer. It’s possible to get a 3 brand mobile phone that works with the Skype system too.

It didn’t take long for hardware manufacturers to bypass the computer and put all this functionality into a small box called an ATA, which plugs into an internet-connected network port on one side and a standard wired or wireless telephone at the other. These systems are usually pre-configured to work with a particular VoIP service provider such as Engin. They typically sell for less than $100 retail but can be much less expensive, even free. There are also devices that combine many or all of the other features that would be used by a home or small business user.

Pricing

The basic, home VoIP plans are quite inexpensive. A typical plan might cost nothing upfront and you’re only charged for the calls you make. Other plans cost a standard monthly fee such as $10 with a number of included calls. Others such as GoTalk’s Aussie Pack cost just $15 a month with a large allowance of included calls including calls to mobile phones.

Business plans range from services similar to these home plans right up to systems that are totally indistinguishable from PSTN systems, and in many cases much better because of the extra facilities they provide. To say nothing of the cost savings.

At present, there seems to be a standard pricing structure across the industry, with most residential and small business VoIP providers competing closely. These are typical prices, but remember that the providers who service the professional end of the market will be after your business based on offering quality and reliability, not just the price of calls.

• National calls to a PSTN line 10c untimed

• Calls within the network (such as Skype to Skype) no charge

• Calls to mobile phones in Australia significantly lower than normal Telstra rates For example, 25c per minute block

• Calls to overseas fixed phones as low as

2.5c per minute though more expensive to some countries. Some plans offer flat, untimed calls such as 20c per call

• Call costs to overseas mobile phones vary depending on country and network called

Phone numbers