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Internet phone calls – what may go wrong?
Usage of Internet phones
With the growing popularity of Internet phones, more and more people are adopting
the use of this technology in an effort to reduce their phone costs. However,
the usage of Internet phones still have not reached levels which may allow it
to completely replace traditional analog phones. Why is this so?
Exposure to viruses and security issues
For one thing, phone calls that wholly depend on the Internet infrastructure
are exposed to the same problems of the Internet itself, which include issues
like viruses, security and network congestions. Due to these factors, other
problems may crop up such as variable voice quality, lack of interconnection
and blockage by firewalls.
Variable voice quality
The issue of variable voice quality arises from the dependability of Internet
phone calls on the network. For example, an Internet call through Skype, which
utilizes point-to-point architecture, will be affected by the route in which
the data packets take to travel from one point to another. This is as intermediary
devices used to route the call may have varied speeds between one another. Therefore,
internet phone calls can sometimes be excellent and at other times, horrible.
Interconnectivity problems
Traditional analog phones can be used to connect to any other phone on the planet
that has a phone number. However, this may not be the case for certain Internet
telephone systems as not all VoIP systems can be interconnected between one
another. In these cases, a public phone system has to be used as an intermediary.
For example, Skype and Vonage are incompatible, due to the lack of a peering
relationship to connect them to one another.
Firewalls
Another problem for Internet phone users is the inability for data packets to
penetrate through Firewalls. With the exception of Skype which has managed to
develop methods to bypass firewalls, other Internet Phone systems which use
standards-based calling protocols (such as SIP, or session initiation protocol),
can be blocked by older or aggressively protected firewalls. However, research
and development is currently in place to develop devices such as the Session
Border Controllers that are aimed to overcome this issue.
High adoption rate
Even though making phone calls through the Internet may pose some issues and
uncertainty to users at this point in time, most people are very open and ready
to adopt this technology. In fact, according to IDC, the number of U.S. subscribers
of residential VoIP services will grow from 3 million this year to 27 million
by the end of 2009. This is because Internet phone calls offer greater perceived
advantages as compared to a shorter list of disadvantages.
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