What is IP Telephony?   IP Telephony is also known as Voice over IP or Internet Telephony and it represents the technology which uses IP-based data networks to transmit telephone calls. When the idea of using the Internet to make telephone calls first became reality, a handful of companies presented products that produced poor voice quality and disorganized dialing directories for tracking the handful of people who could receive calls. The challenge that IP telephony faces is to deliver the voice, fax, or video packets in a dependable flow to the user. It does this by taking the voice or data from the source trunk where it is then digitized, compressed because of the limited bandwidth of the Internet, and sent across the network where the process is reversed. When that doesn't occur and the data packets are lost or don't arrive in time to be decoded in the correct order this causes the speech to break up or have a ripple or stutter effect, similar to a poor cellular-phone connection.   The technology of IP Telephony and the market are changing fast. Standards are rapidly evolving and some have yet to be widely implemented and tested in commercial products. IP telephony is a major networking issue today and PC telephony players are all trying to offer a different solution to beat their competitors. It is an evolution that will widely affect corporate telecommunications in the future.   IP telephony enables companies to place telephony calls over IP networks instead of public switched telephone networks. Currently IP telephony offers cheaper call prices with less quality of service than the standard public switched telephone network otherwise known as PSTNs. As the quality improves many companies will begin to replace their current PSTNs in order to save money and be more cost effective. It is also important to note that currently IP telephony services are relatively unregulated by government. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission says they do not plan to regulate connections between a phone user and an IP telephony service provider.    IP Telephony Services   Aplio A revolutionary device that connects your telephone to the internet! The Aplio/Phone allows you to talk for as long as you want without incurring any long-distance charges. It attaches to your existing telephone just like an answering machine and there is no computer required. Deltathree Deltathree is listed as the world's leader in Internet Telephony. It has the largest privately managed Global IP network in existence. Since it is privately managed it means you get good full duplex quality to any telephone in the world from your computer. Deltathree claims to save you 95% off of your standard telephone bill. Dialpad Stay connected to the internet and make unlimited long distance calls at no charge? Sound to good to be true? It's not..it's Dialpad and it's free. Net2Phone Net2Phone,offer a variety of services, including PC-to-phone, free PC-to-PC calling, and IP-based phone cards for low cost phone calling worldwide without a computer.