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.
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