What is VoIP Telephone Service?

Simply put, VoIP phone service is telephone service that is transported over the internet in packets instead of traveling over regular phone lines. Since it doesn't matter to the average lay person how VoIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol, works, we're going to skip the long drawn out gobelty-gook explaination and just focus on the Pro's and Con's of broadband phone service.

Pro's:

1. VoIP is a whole lot cheaper than regular phone service.
• Since the service rides over your high speed internet connection, which you're already paying for, and which already connects to the major telecom backbones, you basically already have phone service, all you need is a company to do the switching for you and interface with the local phone company where you want to send your call.


2. VoIP phone service goes wherever you go.
• I've taken my broadband phone service router with me all over the world, and it has always worked just like I'm at home. I've plugged my phone box into my laptop in Mexico, Canada, Europe and Asia and made calls back home for free.
  
  Since the internet phone company I use just tracks the Mac number on my box, and matches it to my telephone number, I can make and recieve phone calls anywhere in the world and my phone works just like it would if I was sitting in my office back home. (It costs $4.00 a minute to call the states from hotels in Mexico, but I've made 1,000's of minutes of calls for free.)

Con's:

1. VoIP phone service goes down when your internet service goes down.
• Of course, the same thing happens when a tree falls on a regular telephone line, so there is a comparison there. But, When your internet service slows down or starts and stops due to high traffic or bottlenecks on the web, you can have problems. Problems are usually local, so if you have a good high speed internet provider and your internet service is reliable, your internet phone service will be reliable too.