Widespread deployment of a new technology seldom occurs without a clear and sustainable justification, and this is also the case with voice over internet protocol. Demonstrable benefits to end users are also needed if voice over internet protocol products (and services ) are to be a long-term success. Generally, the benefits of technology can be divided into the following categories:
- Cost Reduction. Although reducing long distance telephone costs is always a popular topic and would provide a good reason for introducing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the actual saving over the long term are still a subject of debate in the industry. Flat rate pricing is available with the Internet and can result in considerable savings for both voice and facsimile. It has been estimated that up to 80% of all calls to Asia are to send faxes, most of which could be replaced by internet protocol. These lower prices, however, are based on avoiding telephony access charges and settlement fees rather than being a fundamental reduction in resources costs. The sharing of equipment and operations costs across both data and voice users can also improve network efficiency since excess bandwidth on one network can be used by the other, thereby creating economies of scale for voice (especially given the rapid growth in data traffic ).
- Simplification. An integrated infrastructure that supports all forms of communication allows more standardization and reduce all forms of communication allows more standardization and reduces the total equipment complement. This combined infrastructure can support dynamic bandwidth optimization and a fault tolerant design. The difference between the traffic patterns of voice and data offer further opportunities for significant efficiency improvements.
- Consolidation. Since people are among the most significant cost elements in a network, any opportunity to combine operations, to eliminate points of failure, and to consolidate accounting systems would be beneficial. Universal use of the internet protocol for all applications holds out the promise of both services and security services may be more easily shared. Even though basic telephony and facsimile are the initial applications for voice over internet protocol, the longer term benefits are expected to be derived from multimedia and multi service applications. For example, Internet commerce solution can combine WWW access to a call center agent from the PC. Needless to say, voice is an integral part of conferencing systems that may also include shared screens, white boarding, etc. Combining voice and data features into new application will provide the greatest returns over the longer term. Although the use of voice over packet networks is relatively limited at present, there is considerable user interest and trials are beginning. End user demand is to grow rapidly the next five years. It is clear that a market has already been established and there exists a window of opportunity for developers to bring their products to market.
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