VOIP: Different Perspectives

VOIP or voice over internet protocol has become the buzzword for the online community, the techno geeks and in these days for the lay man also with subscriptions growing in leaps and bounds since the past two years. In the earlier days of VOIP, the idea was predominantly associated with the voice chat option found in popular messengers provided by yahoo and MSN. The main bottleneck at those times where the slow and sporadic speed of internet which at times fully jeopardized the basic necessity of continuity of a conversation.

Calling to local phones and mobiles were perceived in the earlier days as too much complicated and for most in industry considered it as a superfluous option. The scene changed so rapidly , thanks to the latest developments in technology and up-gradation of infrastructure that has truly revolutionized how we perceive VOIP. The rapid changes in the economies of asian countries like India and China, their opening up of the communication sector to private sector and foreign investment also spearheaded the VOIP trend into uncharted territory surpassing geographical, linguistic and cultural barriers with rates reduced to cents from dollars for international calls. The real potential of the VOIP system lies in its free and unlimited minutes that makes even the most staunch supporter of the traditional technologies vulnerable. Contrary to the traditional modes of communication, there is no prescribed hours for the free call facility and a customer can make calls to selected destinations absolutely free of charge at any point of time and as long as he wants to talk.

The nature and purpose of the use of VOIP has also changed and language classes between two persons connected at two sides of the globe are becoming common. For example, a person from Russia can have language classes from America as long as they are connected to the Internet. Ironically it has also brought some sad news to employees in some countries where their call center jobs where outsourced to cheap labour destinations like India and the Philippines. The commercial implications of VOIP are beyond the scope of even a techno-psychic and has unimaginable repercussions to the world as a whole.

Opting VOIP must be preceded by introspection of a multitude of factors like the location, your usage pattern, the terrain, and most importantly the nature and content of your calls whether it is professional or personal etc. VOIP has its own ups and downs and it is only a matter of years rather than decades for the VOIP to become a dominant medium of communication with the evolution in technology and hardware catching up fast like that of cell phones. The options that comes as default with the service is growing and in most cases out smarts the traditional land phones, a beeline of service providers offering as separate and as bundled offers also testifies for the latest trend in communication. VOIP is to some extend fully dependent on your broad band connection and making it the primary mode of communication will not be a good idea at present and in times of bad connectivity or emergency, it might cost you dearly. But keeping it along with traditional phone connection as an alternative for long distance calls will be appropriate and you can save a great deal of money if you use it effectively and efficiently. Again, immobility of most VOIP hardware happens to be a straight jacket for the in the move people.

VOIP has a lot of vulnerabilities apart from the technological and hardware side and the possible abuse of this medium by terrorists being the major concern. Even though there are options for tracking and tracing users, this demands a lot of effort and at the expense of millions of dollars and allocation of precious resources. A terrorist in middle east can without any serious effort or circumvention can buy an American phone number and can place calls and jeopardize the national security and all these at the behest of technological development and at the same time a british educator can train kids through VOIP at Tibet where the infrastructural, and economic terrain are not congenial. Tracing online activities can become time consuming for the law enforcement agencies with the advent of crackers, hackers and organised techno-crooks who may be willing to facilitate anti-national motives for a bunch of green notes. The notion that people are basically good becomes a scapegoat and these all are some of the dimensions of VOIP technology.