What Makes VoIP Different from Conventional Dial-Up Telephony?
VoIP differs from dial up telephony in a number of significant ways, summarized in Table 1.
Table 1: VoIP versus Conventional Telephony
VoIP Dial-up telephony
Switching Packet switching. Circuit switching.
Quality Can be a lower quality service High quality service.
(echoes, temporary drop outs or even
dropped calls).
Service features VoIP is portable. However, the Operator can provide information on the
service typically cannot provide callers location.
information on the physical location
of the caller (e.g. for emergencies, or
for national security reasons).
Service May not be available on a public, Conventional voice service is generally a
availability ubiquitous basis. Most VoIP public, ubiquitous service. Many traditional
operators have not positioned operators are required to offer service to
themselves as common carriers. anyone that requests it.
Service often requires a broadband
link, which limits availability.
Cost structure Costs typically do not vary with the Although costs largely do not vary with
distance of a call or the time of day usage, some regulators require network
that the call occurs. VoIP providers operators to recover non-traffic sensitive
are able to exploit differences in costs on a metered (per minute) basis.
regulatory treatment to qualify for Despite similar underlying costs, operators
lower cost network access usually charge different rates for different
(arbitrage). call types / carrier types (domestic or
international, wireless or wireline, or
Internet).
Billing / Packetized traffic measured on Traffic metered. Billing based on minutes
metering bandwidth used. of use, distance of call, time of day/week.
Interconnection Arrangements vary depending on Local access interconnection charges
charges negotiation and market power. usually based on forward looking costs of
Smaller ISPs may have to pay for the the network. For international calls,
whole link. Zero fee sender keep all network operators generally share costs by
interconnection between very large splitting the estimated cost of a link in half.
ISPs. VoIP providers may configure
calls to avoid paying any local
exchange access fee.
Regulatory Internet services are generally Network operators, and in some cases
treatment unregulated. As a result, VoIP other telephone service providers, must
providers are often exempt from pay regulatory fees.
certain regulatory fees, such as
universal service contributions.
Analogue phones are the land lines we have connected in our homes and offices. They are also
the industry standard, having been around for decades. The first cell phones that came out were
also analogue, but this is certainly not the case today. When you make a call using the traditional
phone, you are utilising fiber optic networks.
Your analogue voice communications are converted to digital, and then back to analogue at the
other end. Many interconnected switches stay open whether conversation is taking place or not.
This is called circuit switching, which is very inefficient, since it doesn't make good use of the
dedicated lines it follows.
When using VoIP technology over an IP data network, data packet switching is used instead of
circuit switching. A data packet is made up of small chunks of voice data, which are transmitted
only when speaking is taking place. The data packets are sent over any available internet circuit,
rather than waiting to use a specific dedicated line. This improves efficiency and lowers wastage,
both in terms of cost and energy.