VOIP - For NON Techies....
(Rather than become too involved in all the whys and wherefores of how voip works, this page is just a brief overview of what voip is and what you might expect from it).

So.....what is VOIP?
Voice Over Internet Protocol:
Put simply, it's a way to make free phone calls over your Broadband connection.

What???   FREE PHONE CALLS -- TO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD ???
YES. It follows that if you use your ADSL connection to connect to the internet and then use that same connection to make a VOIP call then the same costs apply. And since you are only calling the internet, even if the person you are phoning is on the other side of the world the call would cost the same as the internet connection - ie FREE (assuming, of course, that they too are on the internet).

But......"you don't get 'owt for n'owt" do you?
YES - Imagine that you've got a "normal" Broadband service at the moment and your monthly package is unmetered internet access and email sending/receiving. It is very likely that whether you send 0 emails, 1 email or 683 emails during the month your monthly charge (or subscription) will remain the same - ergo, the emails are free.

Now, replace the phrase "email sending/receiving" in the previous paragraph with "VOIP calls" and then imagine that whether you make 0 calls, 1 call or hundreds of calls you won't pay anything extra for your subscription.

As far as the internet is concerned, emails and voip calls are pretty much the same thing -
just packets of data which need to travel from point (a) to point (b).

The only time extra charges should come in to it is if you make calls which start out as voip calls but at some stage become "normal" landline calls. ie, calls to someones normal telephone number. That will need to become a chargeable call at some point, but even then it is likely to be cheaper than is traditionally the case because the call will usually join the telephone network at a point close to the recipient and so will be charged as a local call rather than national or international.

"you can be on the 'phone all day,
calling all over the world and it won't cost you a penny"

in short, A VOIP solution:

• Can often be set up using some of your existing telephone equipment

• Can be set up to use many PABX systems or can use a "virtual" pbx system providing you with all the facilities but without the hardware investment.

• Offers VERY LOW COST, or FREE PHONE CALLS - Countrywide and Worldwide.

• Can run over a variety of IT networks, including traditional office networks & the Internet.

What special equipment is needed?
Very little special equipment is needed. You obviously need Broadband. What else is needed depends on if you want to use your computer to make the voip calls, or if you would prefer to use a phone on its own.

Here are a few possible scenarios.....
Your voice has, at some point, got to be converted from an analogue signal to a digital one, sent along the network (be it the office network, the internet, or both) and then converted back to analogue so that the person at the other end can hear and understand you. That conversion can either be done by software on a PC, or by hardware built in to the phone or switchboard. I've shown a few examples of VOIP set-ups below.

PC to PC
In the illustration below you can see a phone handset plugged in to the USB port on one of the PCs. The PC is running software which converts the sound signals to digital and sends them over the internet to be received by the other PC which converts them back to audio and then sends them through the PC's soundcard to a headset.

(each user could be using either a USB phone, a head set with mic', or the PC's speakers and a microphone).

PC to VOIP Phone
Similar to the above except the PC on the right connects to the internet via a Switch/Router as is commonly found in most offices, and that user is not using a PC to convert the data back to sound; that is being done by hardware built in to the VOIP Phone which is also plugged in to the router. In this example it doesn't matter if their PC is switched on or off to the person using the voip phone because it's not actually involved in making the connection (in fact the person with the voip phone doesn't actually need to be near a PC at all!).

VOIP Phone to VOIP Phone
In the case below, both ends of the call are having the conversion done by a VOIP Phone rather than a PC. This system can be used just like a traditional phone system except that you "dial" an ip address (ie a network address) rather than a phone number. This scenario would be typical of commercial offices where PC, printers, etc are networked together and then there is a shared connection from the network to the internet using a router. Simply add a few voip phones in to the network and you've created an internal and external telephone network too.

Traditional Analogue Phone to VOIP Phone
A normal analogue phone can also be used for VOIP, but since it does not have any coding or decoding hardware or software built in to it then the conversion from analogue to digital must be made by an external converter (called an ATA - Analogue Telephone Adaptor).