VoIP muscling into the business market

28 March 2008

About five years ago, when few had heard of Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) as an alternative to the dominance of the big telephone companies, the promises of dramatically lower long distance charges and more features seemed almost too good to be true.

Initially, it was. Conversations either lagged or sounded like they were routed through a toilet bowl, while calls were mysteriously dropped. It all served to underline the telecoms' assertion that VoIP wasn't yet mature enough for business or consumers.

But since then, the technology's growth - especially in the business sector - has been strong. While the old copper-wire landline still has a few years ahead of it, the evolution of IP-based telephony will become an even bigger story in the telecommunications industry.