IP technology- Saves money and makes life easier so why aren’t we all using it????

The other day I was reading a side article by Cliff Kuang in the September issue of WIRED magazine titled: When will international phone calls be free? The article caught my attention and spawned some thinking. I posed this question to Bill to gain his thoughts too. The article explained that with the surge in cell phones and voice-over-IP technology in the recent past, it’s not as far off as one might believe. Eventually, long distance will be wrapped into your 4G data plan and treated as though you are sending the calls from an IP source to another IP source (think Skype to Skype currently). So I started to think about how we currently use IP technology, what it has done, and what it can do.

Currently we use IP technology in our personal lives as well as in business. When you pick up the Hofner styled “Rock Band” bass guitar to play the McCartney parts for the new Beatles edition and sign on to join a “Rock Band” John Lennon anywhere in the world, IP technology is being used. When you watch TV on your computer using Hulu or even on your flat panel through AT&T Uverse, you are using IP to receive that signal. When you download a book from Amazon to your Kindle, you are using IP technology. When you check your Gmail from any computer in the world, you are using IP and cloud computing (we will talk about that technology on a later date).

IP technology can offer tremendous effeciencies and help in day to day business; increasing productivity and decreasing costs by:

Using one centralized voicemail and/or phone system or linking multiple smaller systems together

• Enterprise wide voicemail messages
• Much easier Unified messaging,
• Enterprise-wide presence management
• Enterprise-wide call transfer
• Enterprise-wide 3 or 4 digit dialing

Remote or Home offices

• Before IP when a company had worker working from their home it required; phone service, fax machine, and a computer. There was a delay from the time the employee received the bills and they were paid to when the accounting department would then reimburse the employee and also the amount of work on the accounting department to keep track of everything.
• Now with IP a company can provide a laptop with a softphone or a laptop with a physical IP phone. They can work in an internet reimbursement program into the salary and it helps ease the pain and lighten the work for all parties involved.

IP technology can also be used in the office to reduce traveling expenses and costs of dial tone and internet:

• Video conferencing
• Web conferencing
• Dynamic Internet and Dial tone- this is sending your voice and data over one circuit to reduce line costs and share unused idle bandwidth.

Although IP technology provides benefits to us in our personal life and business life, there are concerns. There are quality issues with companies offering free Long Distance if these products because are going out over the public internet and not a carrier network. IP based calling that does not have Quality of Service (QOS allows for the correct voice packets to be delivered in the order they should be and have priority over the data packets) may result in dropped calls, jitter, and poor call quality. When looking at your business does it make sense to risk talking with your multi-million dollar European account over these types of services to save a few bucks on long distance? I doubt it. But can you talk to your friends and family from overseas using these services at home, why not? Do you still need to have face to face meetings rather than video or web conferencing, if it’s an important enough meeting? ABSOULTELY! However there are major benefits. So the question is “How can technology improve my business or my personal life? How can I use it in my environment?” Chances are there is a technology that can help in whatever you are trying to accomplish.

This was Michael Martin's latest conversation with Bill Taylor