VOIP Basics: PVOIP vs. IVOIP

I attended a great presentation on VOIP* this week by James Gillespie, an industry expert and senior engineer with Trans-West Network Solutions (twns.com). He discussed a misunderstanding about VOIP services that I think explains why some people are scared away from the technology. These are my own acronyms, but his point was that there are two very different types of VOIP:

• Private VOIP (PVOIP): VOIP over private connection (WAN connectivity).
• Internet VOIP (IVOIP): VOIP over internet connection (public internet).

The key issue is latency (transmission delay), the enemy of VOIP. High latency causes poor quality voice calls. With PVOIP, you have your own private connection you can control to eliminate latency – calls don’t traverse the public internet. IVOIP calls do traverse the internet and, because it is public, nobody can control it. So when it’s crowded, there are traffic jams, i.e., latency. It’s like BMW trying to test cars on the autobahn rather than a test track. The autobahn is generally ok, but other cars are likely to get in the way at some point. On a private test track BMW has total control of the road and so can go as fast as they want.

Services like Vonage and Skype use IVOIP. These calls are sometimes poor quality because of latency that occurs on the internet. I think when people have one of these bad IVOIP calls, they get scared away from PVOIP because they assume it’s the same as IVOIP. Truth is, a properly designed PVOIP service consistently provides calls that are as clear as traditional voice services.

If you are considering VOIP, the key is to understand which service you are being offered, and then choose the one that meets your needs. IVOIP is more suitable for personal use where poor call quality might be tolerable. For most businesses, call quality is important, so PVOIP is a better solution.

* What is VOIP? It stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, which really just means transmitting voice digitally, as opposed to analog. It’s CDs vs. vinyl records. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voip