History of VoIP

Voice over IP began as the result of work done by some hobbyists in Israel in 1995. They found a way to communicate with each other purely using their PCs, and hence PC-to-PC Internet telephony was born.

In 1995, Vocaltech was one of the first to introduce a software they boringly named (guess what)… Internet Phone Software…

Talk about lack of a creative imagination

As boring as it may sound, it was perhaps the first VoIP device to be able to utilize IP (Internet Protocol) technology over a longer distance by breaking the voice signals into small packets that were send over the Internet. When the packets reached it’s destination, it would re-assemble and hence re-forming the original voice signal.

A New Chapter in History for Voice Over IP

Came 1998, and more and more companies were setting up VoIP gateways to enable PC-to-Phone and Phone-to-Phone. The world realize for the first time the potential of VoIP, and the rest as they say, is history.

Over the years, new standards and protocols were developed. More and more end user services were being introduced. However, most of the work was small scale and not very commercial. At that point of time, VoIP was still ahead of it’s time, albeit by just a few years.

VoIP at that time was very dependent on the availability of high speed bandwidth and Internet connection, therefore the history of VoIP stayed out of the general public’s eye for some time.

According to Business Week (January 05), the time for VoIP has finally arrived in 2005, especially for small business owners like you and me. The bandwidth and high speed internet take-up has been incredible worldwide, and the technology has developed to the point where it is economically for business owners to make the switch safely and confidently.

Internet Telephony, The Next Generation

You may or may not be aware of it, but a study conducted showed that “One in Four International Calls is VoIP” (iLocus, Global VoIP Market).

You may be wondering, “Well if that’s true, how come I never heard about it?”

The answer to that is that for years, VoIP remained a telecommunication carrier’s dirty little secret. Every time you made an International or long distance phone call, these carriers were using VoIP to carry your calls to it’s destination. They cut down on costs drastically, while they still charged you the same, and you paid for it willingly, oblivious to the fact of what was happening “behind the scenes”…