Telecommunications worldwide has experienced a significant revolution over recent years. The long-held promise of network convergence is occurring at an increasing pace. This convergence of data, voice, and video using IP-based networks is delivering advanced services at lower cost across the spectrum, including residential users, business customers of varying sizes, and service providers.
One of the key technologies driving this convergence is VoIP (voice over IP), which has evolved from what many viewed as experimental to a fundamental technology on which businesses from small to Fortune 500 are running their enterprises. VoIP has moved to a level of reliability and capability such that mainstream users are adopting it at a rapidly increasing pace. For this to happen, a number of technical innovations were required to solve issues such as quality of service and reliability.