Chapter 1. How Internet Telephone Calls Work | Talk is Not Cheap!: Saving the High Costs of Misunderstandings at Work and Home

Why did Alexander Graham Bell waste time inventing the normal telephone and wires when he could have just invented the cell phone directly? Or why not just go ahead and invent Internet Telephony rather than just Telephony?

Our friend Alexander had to build upon the knowledge of his time (1876 for the telephone), as do all inventors. Telephony progressed quickly at the beginning but slowed when governments created monopoly telephone companies in order to spread the telephone as widely and quickly as possible. The government-granted telephone company monopoly (originally AT&T in the U.S.) was the trade-off for the push to put a telephone in every household.

Note: HorrorsCan you imagine having only one telephone per household today? How twentieth century.

Universal Service was the term used in the past and is still used today to describe the goal of a phone for every household. In fact, your current telephone company still dings you a few cents each month to fund Universal Service, believe it or not. Although those few cents go to a noble cause, what about the other miscellaneous charges that somehow take a bill that starts out at, say, $11 a month, and bring it up to nearly $25?

One way to get around the ever-mounting charges by big telephone companies is to avoid buying services from those companies. Many people (millions and millions) are talking over the Internet for exactly that reason.

I know some of you are worried that something that uses the Internet must be difficult to install, configure, and use. Fear not. You're already using Internet Telephonyyou just don't know it. You are also surrounded by ways you will use it in the future. Look at these details, gathered at the beginning of 2005:

One-hundred and fifty million or more cell phone users in the U.S. connect over an Internet link for at least one leg of their call routes, even if they don't know it.
Every IM (Instant Messaging) program that offers voice chat uses the Internet for this.
More than a million game players on the Microsoft Xbox Live network can talk to each other using Internet Telephony while they play their games. And those users are scattered over 24 countries (www.xbox.com).
Microsoft Windows XP (the dominant personal computer operating system) includes all the necessary software to support calls over the Internet.

Didn't know you were an experienced Internet Telephony user already, did you? Congratulations on your accomplishment.

Trust me when I tell you that this stuff is almost as easy as hooking up a DVD player, and certainly easier than configuring a computer. You can join the millions and millions of others who have preceded you into the future of telephones. Just like you, the majority jumped into this new world for one of two reasons:

Free (or very cheap) phone calls
Advanced telephone features impossible to get on traditional phones

You don't have to read this chapter to decide which Internet telephone service you prefer. You don't have to read this chapter to configure your chosen Internet telephone service. But I believe a basic understanding of what makes it all tick will make you a smarter customer and help you understand how calling over the Internet differs from the way you make calls now. This really is a different technology than landline phones and cell phones, with many advantages, but also with some differences that may seem odd at first.

I also think this is an interesting technology filled with clever people doing clever things. Keeping track of some factoids may even help you win a trivia contest someday.