What Should Be Your Choice – An IP Phone Or A Normal Phone?
Telephone was a big invention that not only has brought great revolution in our lives but has also opened vast avenues and horizons to the telecommunication world. This technology bridged distances and transformed this world into a global village. The communication has become very easy, which has helped the trade and businesses to grow. Today, there is no city in the world where we do not find a telecommunication company.
Internet took over the corporate world and our everyday lives by a storm. Internet protocol, also known as IP, became the basis of transfer of information worldwide. IP phones are a relatively innovation in the IT world. They work very much like ordinary phones, but they use an IP network like internet, in order to make calls. They employ voice over IP technology, instead of the typical PSTN system. IP phones can also be used within an intranet of a company or organisation.
An IP phone is different from a normal phone in certain ways. Though both serve more or less the same purpose, but IP phones are gaining popularity, especially in the corporate world. It has made video conferencing easier, and cheaper. Long- distance calls made on an IP phone are very economical as compared to the normal phones.
When you need to call someone on a normal phone, you must remember his/her name, with telephone number for calling, but on IP phones you have the luxury to develop caller IDs that can be typed in to make a call. This is very handy feature for individuals and business firms as they have to manage many phone numbers and names of their customers, suppliers and parties.
IP phones are different from normal phones as they have ability to store personal and network-based directories. You would also find features like: call waiting, call transferring and teleconferencing etc. Normal phones also offer the same features but the price of these features are pretty high than available in the IP phones.
IP calls traverse on the internet and makes using the internet services like, weather forecast, stock exchange rates, currency rates, current affairs, horoscopes and live news etc. very easy. You cannot avail any such facilities on normal phones. It seems like IP phones are far better than normal phones as they offer added advantages, cheap rates and plenty of features but still they also have disadvantages.
The main task of an IP phone or any other VoIP technology is to convert analogue audio signals to digital data, so that it can be transferred through the broadband internet, and vice versa. Sometimes, either due to poor signals, or power outages, IP phones give a very poor voice quality, it may drop calls, or it may not work at all. In such circumstances, if you do not have a regular phone standby, your business conference can be ruined.
On satellite internet and high latency internet connection, the IP phones do not work well because of low speed issue. This mostly happens in residential areas; so for such localities, normal phones work the best.
Jeremy Sandcastle is a technology consultant. Buy variety of Cisco IP Phones and get huge discounts on the seasonal sale.
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