Today I discuss about a few basic aspects of Internet Telephony (IPT) as well as its advantages and disadvantages.

The best thing about IPT is that it is highly cost-effective. The other attractive options it offers are:

Customers have the option of flat Internet rating. Thus, they can save money by routing their long-distance calls  over the Internet.

Software solutions provided by the IPT may easily be extended and integrated with other services and applications.

Deploying new IP-telephony services requires much lower investment of time as well as money compared to the traditional PSTN (Public-Switched Telephone Network) environment.

After reading this if you feel like celebrating, then wait! Radical technological innovations are required before the IPT can even hope to match its traditional counterparts. The  quality of voice in Internet telephony is still quite inferior. Moreover, accounting and billing problems need to be sorted out.

In spite of all these hurdles, I don't think that we have long to wait before IPT catches up!