Hey, just read about how fast voice over ip is growing and was wondering how popular it is in the states. Within the next 2-3 years physical voice over IP phones will be very popular and will have their own service providers and the works. Goodbye costly long distance/international calls once and for all. One problem it does pose is a bandwidth problem which could lead to some calls having echo's or being delayed. I'm excited though, virtually free calls to anywhere in the world!

Yea i have heard of it to they give 2 months free and plus $20 for nation wide calls. Thats considered pretty cheap. Its like 45 in regular companies. But i bet SBC or Comcast At&t are gonna lower there prices or else they are gonna lose some customers. In like 3 years most people are probably gonna use Voice over IP. But the other thing people might not get it is that they have to have a router. So it will take time for people to get it.

i've ever came into 3com's seminar some months ago. there was a demo for IP-Telephone which will exhange PABX tchnology. is seems like VoIP but packed to common phones, used for internal office or even for world wide (WAN), using existing LAN. It just like networking PCs, just plugged the rj45 connectors into the existing utp lan port, then play it. no need battery (taking supply from the switch).
but there is not as clear as analog and/or pabc phone yet. but im sure, in some years next will solved. so welcome IP-Phone..

It is popular in malta which is a small country every internet cafe has VOIP and it is very cheap to call abroad.

I am developping for VOIP system.
I would like to see more and more people use it.

It was only 3 years ago, I went to Cisco's main office for a demo if their voip systems. They were ok, but not at the level where you would buy it and install it at your office ... too risky. If an email server goes down, people can accept it; but if the phone goes down, that's a different story.

Now things are different; the technology is better. At the place I work, there are voip phones on every desk - they plug right into the LAN. Overseas phone calls go over the WAN, so there's a huge cost savings.

On another note, i spent like $10 on a 10 min phone call from Vietnam to the US; then I find an internet phone, which was pretty choppy, but doable, and it was so minimal that I could talk for however long I wanted and not worry about the cost.

I have one and its pretty good. You can call long distance and everything. The comapny i am using right now is something like like Packet 8 or soemthing like that. THey gave me two months free to try there service so i just tried it. I still have it currently with my regular phone.

So is it cheaper? I've read about it before and I've heard that it's actually cheaper by 200%! I wonder what the quality is...

I would love to try it! But now, my phone is good, so maybe next year...

~ D O O G A !!!

I like the idea of VoIP and I have configured it in Cisco and its going to save people alot of money but I do have one statement to make:
When the power goes out so does your VoIP Phone, with the analog system the power is fed with the phone line.