The future of telecommunication is bright with VOIP. Traditional phones are slowly being replaced by VOIP technology as businesses and households around the world embrace the benefits and feature that VOIP has to offer. This article will discuss about how VOIP came into existence.

This technology was discovered way back in 1995, when an Israeli company VocalTec released its first internet phone software. This software was built and designed to run on a home PC with the help of utilized cards, microphones and speakers. This software made use of the H.323 protocol which became very popular in the coming years.

The VOIP software enabled internet files to be broken down into small packets before transferring them over the internet. When these packets were received, they were then re ordered in their appropriate form by the receiving software. The only drawback to this software was that during transmission some packets got lost along the way since each packet took different routes to arrive at the receiving computer. During those days broadband connections were not available and this software made use of modems which resulted in poor voice quality when compared to a standard phone.

By the late 90’s VOIP traffic started growing to represent approximately 1% of all the voice traffic in the US. More and more companies started manufacturing and developing devices which enabled PC to phone and phone to phone communications. The popular networking companies like Cisco and Lucent started introducing equipments that could route and switch VOIP traffic which accounted for more than 3% of all voice traffic by the year 2000.

In the year 2005, many changes were seen in the VOIP technology and services. Major voice quality issues had been addressed and Best VOIP traffic could be prioritized over data traffic to enable reliable, clear and unbroken telephone calls. The revenue from the sales made from VOIP equipment and devices was said to be about $3 billion which later shot up to $8.5 billion at the end of 2008.

Since then, VOIP has rapidly developed into a mainstream product and is been used by many corporates and households today. There have been many new and significant developments like the gateway interface between IP and PSTN, VOIP on mobile devices and many more. With more and more innovative technologies developing in the VOIP world, this has become a popular medium to large businesses since it provides an efficient and economical solution to their communication needs.