Increasingly popular with both today\'s home users and businesses alike, VoIP looks set to replace traditional phone usage in a big way. Three main types of VoIP exist. Increasingly popular with both today\'s home users and businesses alike, VoIP looks set to replace traditional phone usage in a big way. Three main types of VoIP exist:

Consumer VoIP

Numerous consumer oriented VoIP services have low cost or free voice calling. This can be through a specific adaptor connecting to broadband services at home, or through a telephone-like program on a home computer.

Consumer VoIP services allow a really cheap way of calling the public telephony network. Often consumers are able to take advantage of many cost cutting deals. Skype allow customers to call each other for free.

A problem with such services is that their mode of use is not always apparent, being more complex than the traditional phone. Additionally, if the computer required is busy processing something considerable in size the sound quality can sometimes suffer as a result. Good quality headphones, especially not cheap microphones and speakers, are best used so that the sounds aren\'t distorted and feedback or background noise is not an issue.

Small to medium sized company VoIP

\"Centrex\" is used by a lot of VoIP services. This is a phone service that performs all the central call controls and switching usually done within a box on the wall in your office is actually done at a remote internet hosting center, in a central server. Commonly quoted as a \"PBX\" in the sky, Centrex services involve customers having telephones on their desks that connect out, via broadband internet, to the PBX servers. This VoIP system means that:

• Deployment is a simple affair, phones just requiring plugging into the internet.
• Lower expenditure is required, the phone service is now generally maintained via the web.
• Capital spending is lowered, phone switches are not needed.
• Lowered internal phone call costs occur, in particular between offices and workers at their homes (inter-site calls).
• There are increased novel ways of working and flexibility, e.g. offices can be more distributed, and people can work from home.

Big business VoIP

Possibly the oldest facet of the VoIP market is the interconnection between traditional office phone systems (i.e. the PBX) across the various corporate sites.
A lot of corporate customers get their phone systems from vendors like Panasonic or Avaya. Commonly via the use of a VoIP adaptor or converter these systems are able to be linked enabling calls that route between different company sites to be carried over the corporate internet connection (corporate VPN). In this way no additional costs are levied on the user.

In much the same way, a lot of new office phone systems are said to be \"IP enabled\". Multi-site connectivity which uses an internet connection may well be built in. On the other hand home-worker handsets may be connected to the head office PBX across the internet.

All kinds of cost saving solutions for businesses are offered by vendors, generally as a result of new technology. It is typically well worth discussing the various options available with current equipment maintainers, at least to begin with.

By Alex Rider