Why VoIP?
Voice over IP provides major benefits to both service providers and enterprises:
- Sustainable cost reduction for service providers and enterprises
- Increased revenues for service providers
- Enhanced productivity for enterprises.
Traditional circuit-switched telephone networks were designed to carry voice traffic. However, because circuit-switched networks reserve an entire channel for each conversation (even when no-one's talking) they do not use the network's available bandwidth in the most efficient way.
Over the last two decades both service providers and enterprises have been using packet technologies (such as frame relay, ATM and IP) to transport data. In a packet network, packet switching interleaves bits and bytes of traffic from many users on shared facilities using the network's available bandwidth far more efficiently.
Because these two types of networks have been used for a single service only, service providers and enterprises have had to invest in two separate networks if they wanted to transport both voice and data traffic. Building, managing and maintaining these "overlay" networks has proven to be very expensive.
So what's the answer? Service providers and enterprises agree that the network of the future must offer combined voice and data communications over a single integrated platform built on packet technology. Internet Protocol (IP), the packet technology used on the Internet, has proven its ability to efficiently integrate voice traffic into the flow of data on IP networks enabling voice and data services to be delivered to users from a single multiservice network.
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