Internet telephony is calling

Internet telephony is the future and inevitably organizations would have to make a shift towards it, writes Puneet Mehrotra.

Nuking long-distance phone bills

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"Virgin expects to save $700,000 a year, mostly in long-distance phone bills, on a network that cost $330,000 in the first year and will ultimately carry a price tag of $1 million" Business Week July, 2006.

Delta Air Lines spent less than $10 million on its VoIP systems for its 17 call centers. That's a saving of more than $10 million annually on what used to be a $35 million budget for operating the telecommunications technology in the call centers.

According to Business Week (businessweek.com/tech ) by 2006 December there would around 15 million enterprise IP telephony lines, about 21% of the North American installed enterprise base. That's up from 11% in 2004. Global sales of enterprise IP telephony gear are projected to reach $4.9 billion this year and more than double to $10.6 billion in 2009, according to Synergy Research Group.

VoIP back to basics

Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP, (also referred to as IP Telephony, Internet telephony, and Broadband Phone) is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based network. Protocols used to carry voice signals over the IP network are commonly referred to as Voice over IP or VoIP protocols.

PC Mechanic carried a very informative article on cost saving by adopting VoIP. Written by John Blackman the article carried a list of items that would directly save costs. The article titled "Calculating Savings from Adopting VoIP" can be viewed at pcmech and is a definite recommendation if you want to find out quantitative and qualitative ways to save for your organization.

Here is a list of the money-saving items long distance charges

1. Setting up your own phone infrastructure between sites you own

2. Leasing DIDs instead of phone lines

3. Providing services directly to your employees

4. Providing your own voicemail

5. Reduction of conference call charges

These six items will directly save you money. John Blackman's article also has an MS Excel spreadsheet that has the formulas worked out to show how much money you can save and how long it will take to get a return on the investment in VoIP equipment you make. You can download the VoIP Savings Calculator Spreadsheet by clicking on this link.

VoIP - a bag full of advantages

It isn't just the saving of voice calls that VoIP offers. Internet telephony has several advantages. Innovation is the key to its success. Whether the deployment is for conferencing or content delivery. Like Virgin deploying VoIP will not only save Virgin $700,000 a year, mostly in long-distance phone bills, but also the new network lets Virgin stream content, 250,000 CDs, 11,000 DVDs and 7,000 games-to any kiosk in the store.

Internet telephony is the future

VoIP isn't any longer the poor cousin of telephony. New feature rich VoIP phones are being introduced in the market. Just this week D-link introduced its flip-style Wi-Fi Phone that uses VoIP technology with 802.11 wireless connectivity in a compact Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based package. Through this VoIP phone calls can be made wherever there is a Wi-Fi network or to open a hot spot to the Internet, without the use of a PC.

Internet telephony is the future and inevitably organizations would have to make a shift towards it. The super cost savings combined with a bundle of advantages VoIP is simply too good for organizations to resist.

Puneet Mehrotra is a web strategist atwww.cyberzest.comand edits www.thebusinessedition.com you can email him onpuneet@cyberzest.com