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Season Three Research Files
Episode Thirteen
1:00am-2:00am
Internet telephony is communications services, such as voice, fax or voice-messages that are transported via the Internet, rather than the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The basic steps involved in originating an Internet telephone call is to first convert the analog voice signal to digital format and then compress and translate the signal into Internet protocol (IP) packets for transmission over the Internet. The process is reversed at the receiving end.
Originally regarded as a novelty, Internet telephony is attracting users because it offers tremendous cost savings relative to the PSTN. Users can bypass long-distance carriers and their per-minute usage rates and run their voice traffic over the Internet for a flat monthly Internet-access fee. Unfortunately, right now that level of reliability and sound quality is not available on the Internet, primarily because of bandwidth limitations. In voice communications, this could appear in the form of gaps or periods of silence leading to a clipped-speech effect. Over the next few years, the industry will address the bandwidth limitations by upgrading the Internet backbone to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), the switching fabric designed to handle voice, data, and video traffic. Such network optimization will go a long way toward eliminating network congestion and the associated reliability.
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