Communication is the stuff that our lives are hinged on. We phone, text and email our business contacts and our friends and family. If you ever get the idea that communication is not important, spend the day without your computer, your cell phone or even your landline and see how long it takes for you to whimper and promise to pay any price. The public switched telephone network (PSTN) knows this of course, and for a long time, they held the majority of us captive, forced to pay the high cost to the only game in town.

 

Communication Was Expensive

 

Then along came cell phones and the phone companies started getting a little antsy. They paid millions for elaborate ad campaigns that disregarded the cell phone as little more than a passing fancy. They were convinced that there would never come a day when people would do away with their landlines. In the markets with really solid cell phone service, ask around and see how many people still pay for traditional phone service.

 

VoIP has been around for awhile, and it is steadily eating into the phone companies remaining customers. Because it is so efficient as a network, the cost of calls can be kept low and beneficial to the customers. Low cost is only one of the advantages of using VoIP, both for family and business use.

 

Low Cost VoIP

 

VoIP takes great advantage of the internet and the concept of packet switching. PSTN calls are made with circuits that have to open or close during a call. The more customers on the network, the more circuits are needed. With packet switching, the information, in this case, digital data is gathered into bundles and then sent along the broadband connection to the correct IP address. The packets can travel along, finding the right pathway, the path with the least amount of congestion. Because the packets can travel this way, there is less need for more networks, which again, reduces the required costs and keeps prices low.

 

Most people already have a home computer, and as long as they have a high speed Internet connection, they are eligible to take advantage of VoIP and all of its remarkable benefits. Of course, some of the savings may be eliminated, as more and more traditional phone companies rush to get their share of the voice over IP pie, but for now in many cases, long distance service is free to the consumer.