What are the benifites of VOIP 1

There are several phone comapnies such as Net2phone (using the Linksys router) and Vonage (using a Cisco ATA186) that will offer you IP based access to their phone services. This bypasses the local CO and allows a home user to get rates that you usually would need a dedicated Long distance trunk for (.01 per minute domestic long distance).

The advantage of the router providing the VoIP is that you no longer need use Net2Phone over your PC. You plug a regular phone into a phone jack on your router.

With other products, such as the Cisco ATA 186 (works with Vonage), you could have a home office extension from your company's IP enabled PBX, all without telco based call forwarding or a separate phone line.

Because your phone number is mapped to the VoIP device using an IP or MAC address instead of a physical location, you could have calls routed to the same phone number anywhere you take the device (e.g. your Home Office extension at a hotel with broadband access). Robert Harris

VoIP's best purpose now is for the corporate environment with exisitng Data circuits in place between offices. This saves them additional T-1's to add for voice only or eliminates the existing T-1's to let voice ride over IP or Frame circuits.

If you have a home application it is best used for remote (telecommuting) work environments and off site call center agents.

If you have a large long distance bill at home, then VoIP mentioned by RLHarris could make a serious dent in your LD bill. Or......., you could always use it just to be one-up in the neighborhood, then let the neighbors wonder "what's she up to?"
Hope this helps some and forgive the humor, it comes with the territory. Jerry Pannell
techs@sclb.com

One more thing VOIP is not for home use, for it to work properly you need high speed internet access and a VPN into the network where the VOIP is located. There is something called a SOFTPHONE made by Avaya, and you could load this onto your laptop or desktop so your extension could travel with you! It is one step down from RADVISION.

I would agree that the best application for residential VoIP is telecommuting. But there is a potential for savings off a home phone bill if you work out of your home and make hours of calls per month. For example, the best residential rate with no term commitment or service fees I have seen is .05 per minute. Net2Phone is .02 per minute for all domestic calls. This will save you $1.80 per month per hour of calling.

Local Toll calling, which is still monopolized by the local phone companies, is even more expensive. In Southern California it is .10 to .12 per minute, and it is even more in states such as Washington and Montana. With IP based phone service, all these calls are billed at the same .02 domestic rate.

Loosely Related Story:
Playstation uses VoIP for it's new online video game SoCom. Some of the users (mainly kids) have discovered that if you don't talk too much during online play, the game responds faster to your combat related commands (those dumb X and Y buttons they push). It looks like the kids are learning about network latency and packet prioritization on their own weird little way! Robert Harris

VOIP is great, telco would like to use switches with capability of VOIP save tons of money the only problem is it cannot support 911. Liability for telephone company

Do you not need to have 1. an IP set and 2. an IP set to answer at the other end? in other words you cannot call a friend who has only dial tone?
This is how I only know working with phone systems but if this can be done from home then great.

From NET2Phone you can make a call to anyone. There are different rates for this (since IP to IP is cheaper to maintain and switch). I would like to make one other point for VOIP technology. I have setup quite a few corporations with VOIP and the best reason I see but usually overlooked is capacity. Take this into consideration.

1 ISDN Point to Point (1.54MBps) from Seattle to Georgia would cost around 4-8k monthly depending on your contract. This would give you 23 voice channels between your sites.

1 Frame Relay (1.2Mbps) dropped here in Seattle and in Geaorgia would cost you normally around 2-4K monthly. After the initial access charge (1-2k per site). Now for the best part with the 1.2 MBps pipe you can support upto 64 simultaneous conversations using a G.729A codec (VOIP codec).

I have done this at many company's and the voice quality is very close to toll quality. As in 9-10 people cannot tell that they are talking on IP at only 26-28k packeted voice. It is a great way to save $$$ and resources. Good Luck