So why is VOIP considered so hot? Mainly one reason: price. VOIP providers can vastly undersell traditional phone companies, especially when it comes to long distance and international calling. This is mainly because they are (currently) free from most regulation. They don’t have to pay international or long distance termination fees and taxes, so they don’t have that cost to pass on to you, the consumer. In addition, they are offering an inferior service (sorry, the truth hurts sometimes). Think about the last time you picked up you telephone handset and didn’t get a dial tone? Can you even remember such a time? (I can’t). OK, now think. When was the last time you broadband Internet connection went down? (yesterday…).

If you are a company that has people who travel internationally, you seriously need to think about supporting VOIP for your traveling workers. While I was traveling to Denmark on business in April, I met up with some people whose company used VOIP for all their internal phone calls (this is an extreme). When they got to their hotel rooms at night, they paid the hotel for access to the Internet to check their e-mail and do work and stuff. Since they also had the VOIP software on their laptops, they were able to make free phone calls rather than paying the standard telephone rate (I was paying a $1/minute on my cell phone…). Their phone traffic was converted into Internet traffic that streamed back to their company HQ in California. Once there, the equipment would hook it up to the regular phone network so they could talk to people in the office, or even their family at home. And it was all charged as a local call.

This technology also allows executives to have office extensions at home that look and act just like their phones in the office. You can call your CEO on his normal extension, and he could be at home, in the office, or even in a different country and it all looks the same to the person making the call!

It turns out that in the next couple of months my wife is probably going to be doing some international travel for business. The last time she had to do this, we used SMS on our cell phones to send messages back and forth to communicate and coordinate phone calls (nothing like wasting money calling the hotel when she is still out at dinner…). This time I plan on putting some VOIP software (Skype) on her laptop so we can talk for free, as long as she has Internet access. And if she can’t access the Internet, I can still use SkypeOut to make a VOIP call that is local to the country she is in at a reduced rate (we’re talking like $0.02 or $0.07 a minute). At this point, I would be remiss in my duties if I don’t point out this guide to Using your Bluetooth Headset with Windows XP which allows you to make your calls using the same Bluetooth headset you currently use with your cell phone.

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