Voice over IP - Practice

I know how it all works in theory but I am not sure about the practice. I am not quite sure how you can phone a landline for free. I understand how the PC to PC operation works its just sent over TCP/IP but I don't understand how it can be free to phone a landline as there must be a lot of conversion processes involved and somebody must have to pay a fee some where.

 

AFAIK you can't call a physical phone (ie, not a PC) for free. With Skype you have to use Skype Out to call normal phones and it costs money, allthough usually a lot less than using a normal phone.

Michael.

 

Thanks that was what was confusing me, I couldn't work out how it could be possibly free. Its probably not worth us bothering with it as the vast majority of calls me make a cheap local calls anyway.

 

I haven't read about this for years (aboout '97 ish?) and I think the idea behind it then was for free internal calls, utilising existing Lans....which seemed a good idea...

 

Its actually quite common especialy now 2mbps connections seem to be norm at home.

I think a lot of businesses use it to talk to different branches etc.

Also I believe a lot of those cheap international calls thing you see use VIP.

 

My GF has Skype Out and as far as I can see it's not really worth it unless you make a lot of international calls. Local lines are so cheap anyway with someone line OneTel where you stick that box on the end of your phone. Though I have noticed that box messes up calling some places.

It is convenient to call from your PC though.

 

All the cheap International call rates you see on websites and calling cards will use VoIP. Not only that but it will most likely be VoIP over the public internet. It's still not possible to offer such low rates using legacy Telephony due to the much higher bandwidth requirements, (and hence far better call quality). Even using VoIP over private carrier networks will still only allow eight times the volume of traffic. Which would all other things being equal allow carriers to cut their margins by around 87% and still make a profit. However margins are low anyway and so even an 87% cut in margin will not reduce prices to levels as seen on the various websites offering extremely cheap international calls. (eg 2p/min to Brasil vs around 27p/min from a traditional telco using a special International call package).

GTM