Monday, November 9, 2009

Most popular VOIP companies

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP services have become increasingly popular in the last few years. In case you aren’t aware of VoIP, these services include full communication such as phone calls, videoconferencing and telephony services all of which can be completed over a high-speed internet connection. Most VoIp companies are worldwide as the only physical connection that you need to them is your high-speed internet connection. All contact and communication is competed online or by your VoIP phone. The most popular VoIP companies out there are: Vonage Vonage has become one of the most recognized of the VoIP Companies. Who hasn’t caught themselves humming that catchy jingle or smiling at the stunts in their commercials? Vonage has over 150 global markers in the USA, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom. They were founded in January of 2001 and are based in Holmdel, New Jersey. As of December 2005 Vonage employs over 1400 people worldwide and completes over 35 million calls per week on over a million active lines. Skype Skype is a unique VoIP company in that it offers its download free to consumers. This allows people to make free calls worldwide using Skype peer-to-peer software. Charges are made for personalizing the Skype download by adding mobile phone services, voicemail, and access to worldwide hotspots. Skype service does require a PC platform at this time but efforts
are being made to expand to mobile devices and handsets. Skype reports that over 221, 078,102 users have downloaded the Skype software. Skype was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, both who co-developed KaZaA, the world’s most used peer-to-peer software. Skype has offices in Luxembourg, London and Tallinn. BroadVoice BroadVoice, another VoIP company that is located in the United States but offers services worldwide. They were founded in Billerica, MA in December of 2003, and now provide service to 120 plus countries. BroadVoice offers a package of twenty-five basic and advanced features that are billed at a monthly rate. The company allows users to make and receive calls anywhere in the world as long as a high-speed internet connection is available. BroadVoice reports over 600,000 plus users with numbers increasing monthly. SunRocket SunRocket is a VoIP provider established by Paul Erickson and Joyce Dorris in early 2004. These two former MCI executives were coworkers for over 10 years prior to founding SunRocket. Offices of this provider are found primarily in North Americas - the United States and Canada. This provider offers low costs, great voice calling clarity/quality and the option of adding a free additional phone number with no additional charge. With all these options available it comes as no surprise that SunRocket is quickly gaining ground on its closest competitors.

VOIP Gateway

A Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) gateway is a network device that converts voice and fax calls between the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and an IP network in real time. A VOIP gateway is also known as a media gateway, networking equipment. With a minimum of one Ethernet and telephone port, the controlling of the gateway can be done through the application of various protocols: SIP, MGCP, LTP, etc.

The VOIP gateway basically operates voice and fax compression/decompression, packetization, control signaling and call routing. Other service features can include billing systems, network management systems, and interfaces to external controllers, like Gatekeepers or Softswitches.

Voice Over IP Gateway assists carrier services. It offer flexible call integration, ringing and sound (tones) quality, and supports the transference of the calls resulting in lower consumer costs combined with ease of access. Gateways also helps offer compliant, easy numbering plans, choosing the lowest cost route automatically while keeping transparency at both the ends.

A gateway converts to IP voice packets through different applications, relying heavily upon software, tools and technical documentation for everything to work together. Overall, the gateway helps enable basic phone features: dial tone, ringing and caller I.D.