How Voice Over the Internet Works
The Myth of Cheap Long Distance Lately, the major carriers have been offering "low" long distance rates. But if you look closely, you'll find that their rates aren't so low after all... Read More...	The Internet cannot carry regular telephone signals. So it "simulates" telephone conversations and fax transmissions by converting the analog signals to digital data; moving the data over the Internet, and then transforming the data back into analog so that the receiving telephone (or fax machine) can produce the sound of the conversation. As recently as a year ago, Internet call quality was poor and Internet phone service was unreliable. Advances in technology have changed all that! Data/Voice Gateways Data/voice gateways are the latest development in Internet telephone technology. Gateways are sophisticated computers configured to connect regular local telephone calls to and from the Internet. Their software encodes and compresses calls, and allows quality voice and fax communications to be carried more efficiently than over the regular telephone network. Gateways are widening the acceptance of Internet telephone because they let anyone with a regular phone or fax machine make calls. This is important: Not everyone has a computer; not everyone with a computer is connected to the Internet, and people aren't always at their computers when they want to communicate by phone or fax. Internet Telephone In Action Internet telephony is simple. Click here to see a picture of how it works. Briefly: The customer dials into the gateway. The call is initially sent over the local telephone network. Once the call reaches the gateway, information about it is sent to a Network Operating Center (NOC) for processing. Based on information received back to the gateway from the NOC, the gateway then routes the call over the Internet to the appropriate terminating gateway. The terminating gateway is based on the called number. Once the call reaches the terminating gateway, it is sent over the local telephone network to the called number. Here are some common questions.
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