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Okay, who out there is confused by the new phone services that seem to be popping up daily in TV commercials? In particular the different names their highly paid marketing teams use
to describe their phone service?
Let's see what phone service names are used by the main service providers, often on prime time TV commercials.
Broadband Phone Service : Vonage, Verizon and Viatalk providers use Broadband Phone Service.
Internet Phone Service : Sunrocket and Packet8 service providers use Internet Phone Service.
Digital Voice Service : Comcast phone service is called Digital Voice Service.
VoIP Service : Lingo refers to their residential and business plans as VoIP phone service.
What is going on?
The consumers are getting confused, can we not just stick to one name to describe this type of phone service. After all it is all the same type of phone service : it is Digital Phone Service
over your Broadband High-Speed Internet connection.
Now in fairness we could be described as hypocrites here. Take a look at our site. What do you see?
You will see reference to
VoIP service, Voice over IP providers, Voice over Internet Protocol, Broadband Phone services, Digital Phone provider,
Internet Phone providers, Digital Voice solutions.
Yes we are guilty of doing this too. However in all honesty we did start with the plain old VoIP name because at that time this is what the
name was for transmitting your voice over the Internet. Makes sense if you think about it, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Internet Protocol is the protocol used to send everything over the
Internet backbone. The problem for us is we have to keep dropping in other names for this form of digital phone service too otherwise some of our
readers get confused if for example, they have never heard of VoIP but have heard of Internet Phone Service.
The problem, in our opinion, is that as time has gone by the marketing team for each service provider has put their own spin on it to make it appear like it is a different
form of phone service. There are a few reasons for this:
VoIP is not seen as a good marketing term since it does not describe the phone service well at all and most people do not know what the acronym means.
In the early days when the service was referred to as VoIP the voice quality was not as good as it is today. Service providers do not really want to associate themselves with this type of service and quality.
If referred to as Internet Phone Service or Voice over IP consumers tend to associate this phone service with their PC at home because of the term "Internet".
This of course is not the case, although this is the business model for Skype. Consumers can continue to use their regular phone with no PC in the communication path. The service providers send you an adapter (ATA)
that you connect your regular phone to and the ATA hooks to your Broadband High-Speed Internet connection. No PC is required!
To make our point again, regardless of the phone service name that the service providers use, they are all the same type of service. All of them require a Broadband High Speed Internet connection and your voice is sent
digitally from your phone over your Broadband connection as VoIP packets. Look at the words in the last sentence and it is easy to see how the marketing folks end up with Digital Voice, Digital Phone Service,
Internet Phone Service, Broadband Phone Service and VoIP.
So are there really no differences?
Providing your broadband connection is high enough speed you should get good quality phone service
from all of the service providers.
The likes of Comcast and Verizon promote the fact that they can put everything on to one bill which is definitely convenient and in the case of Comcast
they have a "Triple Play" package, providing TV, Phone Service and High Speed Broadband Internet all on one bill. This is certainly nice to have although keep in mind that you will typically pay a price premium for this convenience
over the standalone service providers such as Sunrocket, Viatalk and Vonage. It is through these service providers that you will achieve the best digital phone service savings, in our opinion.
Hopefully you are a little clearer now on all of the names used for this form of digital phone service. Many different ways to name them but ultimately they are all the same. Let WhichVoIP.com help you choose a digital phone service provider and start saving on your phone bills today.
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