VOIP WORLD

VOIP and IP Telephony

2007-02-24T19:39:00.000-08:00

I am still learning about VOIP and came to know of an interesting concept. How IP Telephony and VOIP are not one and the same thing. Well, to give you folks an idea as to how IP Telephony and VOIP are different..
VOIP is the transmission of Voice over an IP Platform. The voice might actually have originated on a PSTN network, was converted to packets to be transported over IP Network, and might actually be handed back to PSTN. Hence, here, only a part of the transmission is over IP Network.
IP Telephony takes this a few steps further and talks about an end to end IP System, where voice is converted to packets at the point of origin and transmitted over an IP network. IP Telephony talks of Voice Clients and Voice Applications over an IP Network. The receiving end is either a IP enabled device or an IP Gateway.

Microsoft Enters VOIP WORLD

2006-11-08T09:06:00.000-08:00

Microsoft plans to enter the consumer VOIP Market. While Microsoft does not get the first mover advantage(they are not known for it anyways), its certainly high time for them to jump in. Andy has a long and interesting article on the fallouts.

Combine the facts: the market penetration of Windows in the consumer market is the highest, and that a major portion of the market uses their desktop/laptop running on the Windows Operating System as the base for connecting through VOIP.

This will be a formidable competition and no surprises, if it heralds a new era of consolidation in the VOIP Market. I am also interested in finding out what this means for VOIP penetration in the third world where access to VOIP is limited to the tech saavy only. With the product being bundled as part of VISTA, I think this will change.

Plantronics Launches VOIP Enabled Bluetooth Headset

2006-11-06T08:29:00.000-08:00

Plantronics, Inc. , the world's leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of lightweight communications headset products, launched the Plantronics Voyager 510-USB in Singapore. This, they claim, is the first Bluetooth headset system optimized for VoIP. Read the whole story here.