The Birth of Internet Phones

Many of the elements of VoIP have been under development for many years. For example, G.711, the most widely used voice compression technology for VoIP, has been used since 1972 to pack more voice traffic onto long-distance telephone cables. If you use a digital ISDN phone at work, you are already using G.711. Other portions of the VoIP infrastructure, most notably the Internet itself, have been under development since the 1960s. VoIP is merely a conglomeration of many services into a cohesive package to enable business and consumer voice communications.

Enterprising developers began to tie these services together in the mid-1990s. In 1996, Net2Phone began offering computer-to-telephone communications over the Internet. The same year, VocalTec released the first computer-to-computer product for consumer VoIP, aptly named Internet Phone.

In 2000, Microsoft bundled Net2Phone's computer-to-phone product into its MSN Messenger product. Many users got their first taste of Voice over IP with this product. At the time, significant delays in speech transmission were common due to the relative scarcity of high-speed Internet services. Use of VoIP services required a firm commitment to save money, as the user would have to deal with noticeable delays in communication and the proper configuration of the computer's audio devices.

As new communication standards were ratified and came into use, VoIP continued to improve until, in January 2001, Vonage began offering VoIP solutions to business users. Business acceptance was a critical test for this technology, signaling the readiness of this technology for widespread use.

The VoIP industry has since grown to be the preferred communication solution for business call centers. Many companies now employ customer service and support representatives overseas, linking them to consumers with VoIP networks. One Microsoft Product Support Services representative once told me that Microsoft has call centers in nearly every world time zone, all using Voice over IP. In this way, the company can provide 24-hour support services while having staff work normal day-shift hours.

With all this growth, consumer VoIP remained a technology for propellerheads until vendors began offering prepackaged solutions. As the larger VoIP players began offering these Internet phone kits, consumer acceptance accelerated. By early 2005, VoIP services in the United States passed the million-line mark. Analysts predict that by 2007, 30 percent of U.S. homes will be using this technology.