Do you remember the days when long distance phone calls were so expensive people set timers to keep from talking too long? Do you remember 1982 when the Internet was coming into its own, and someone came up with the idea to use the Internet for long distance calls. It worked back then, but with today's new technologies like high-speed ADSL links, Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP has come into its own. Service providers are taking advantage of the technologies to give their customers great products like the VoIP ADSL phone that offers long distance service at a low cost.

Early users of VOIP encountered voice quality problems like lags in the conversation and freeze frames while video conferencing. Remember modem connections that hogged the phone line and ran peak rates of 57 Kilobits per second?

VOIP today is a different beast. VoIP calls are no longer plagued by lost words. VoIP video conferencing runs smoothly. All made possible by high speed ADSL links.

VoIP is complicated, turning voice into data, compressing it, transmitting it, uncompressing it again at the other end. How did we ever accomplish this with modems? Now we can subscribe to ADSL with its blazing fast speeds and enough bandwidth to make VoIP look easy.

A lot of work has been done to fine tune the experience of calls and video over VoIP. The communication industry works together and uses standards like SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) to control data exchanges and other standards to improve sound quality.

To make high-speed service available to a wide range of users, various levels of service are offered with prices that match. The advantage here is that different types of users, from a student at a home computer to a business with many users can choose a service they can afford. There is also a wide range of speed options, but typically start at 128 Kilobits per second for a low-end DSL package to 8 Megabits per second for ADSL.

Communication service providers are always looking at innovative ways to use the ADSL and VoIP technologies. Because ADSL uses only part of a telephone line, most configurations make it possible to have both VoIP and standard land lines on one device. If the Internet goes down, a call can still be completed on the land line. A common configuration is an ADSL integrated modem with security firewalls offering ports for phone connections. New on the market are wireless and dedicated VoIP ADSL phones that provide cost-effective, land-line quality calls. Stay tuned for more. It is only going to get better.