The Rich History of VoIP Phone Systems

VoIP phone systems are undoubtedly changing the face of telecommunications worldwide not only for businesses but also the residential telephony. Like any other rising technology it had a humble beginning with minimal success at the start due to some drawbacks and limited resources back then, but soon enough the technology accelerated rapidly to the revolutionary phone system that we know today. In February 1995 a US based company released the first ever VoIP phone system which is configured much like what we see today using a personal computer, a microphone and a speaker but instead of a SIP protocol which is somehow the standards today it used a H.323 protocol. However at the time the technology faced major setbacks because of the modem quality which lead to poor voice transmission and limited broadband connection that resulted in inaccessibility for the majority. By the year 1998, numerous developers like Cisco and Lucent entered to enrich the technology developing software to establish pc to pc and pc to phone connections, by that time the technology is already changing the telecommunications industry accounting to 1% of all voice calls in the United States which quickly accelerated to 3% in 2000. In parallel to the widespread boom of the internet worldwide during the early 2000’s major setbacks of inaccessibility was addressed and voice quality improved drastically as better broadband modems and speed was developed. In 2005, VoIP phone systems reached a staggering sales projection of $3 billion dollars making it one of the fastest rising industries. 2006 and 2010 has been the golden ages of the technology with major milestones between these years and record breaking growth. Developments like a cloud PBX, call handling, call management features and PSTN connection paved way for businesses to further capitalize on VoIP, but the best part are the calling rates, with broadband being as reliable as ever businesses had the ability to make international phone calls without worrying about their bills. Today in 2012, the groundbreaking technology still remained a hefty competition for conventional telephony with threats of overlapping them out. Numerous providers were born and have set the tone for a further growth; in fact it has been projected to reach $35 billion by 2015 with more than 180 million users worldwide. Despite VoIP’s success we can say that the technology is still young, numerous developments are continuously being born making sure that the future of telecommunications is more exciting and thrilling than today.