The Future of VOIP

When it comes to VoIP technology for corporations, small businesses, and individuals, long-distance phone calls, conferencing, e-mail, and other communications needs are now affordable and flexible. The future of VoIP technology is looking very promising as new dimensions are being explored and enhancements offered to customers.

When VoIP technology was first developed, many people were skeptical, mainly because it sounded too good to be true. However, as time has passed and this technology has proven itself time after time, these same people are now realizing that the future of VoIP technology is indeed solid.

Already VoIP technology has made advancements that are catching business owners’ interest. In addition to making long-distance calls all around the world for little to no money, this technology is always on the move, introducing new features. For example, once considered a future aspect of VoIP technology, SIP has now come to fruition.

The SIP protocol is now revolutionizing the way we communicate in our everyday life. Just as various network and messaging systems that forged the today's Internet merged and followed a single standard, the need for interoperability between walled garden real-time communication islands like Skype, MSN, Yahoo, Google and the telecom industry spearheaded SIP as the protocol to bridge and realize inter-domain seamless communications across the Internet. Together with other protocols and standards like ENUM, SIMPLE and Jabber, the convergence between mobile and fixed networks, IM, Presence, voice and video communications will finally take place. The next generation of SIP enabled mobile devices will put everything into the hands of the end-user.

The driving factors for convergence are the IMS concept and the P2P applications based on the end-to-end principle of the Internet. The differences and similarities between these two concepts are shaping the next generation value chain of network operators, VAS providers, MVNOs and device manufacturers.

For the benefit of the end-users, it is important for the market forces to position themselves while understanding the technology behind the business cases. The combined P2P, SIP and IMS tutorials held by renowned specialists in these fields, the showcases and demonstrations will help analyzing the pros and cons of rolling out services based on these technologies and help in the decision making of the service providers and customers moving in this new direction.

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