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| The emergence of the Internet is well measured by
comparing the proportion of data traffic to voice traffic on networks.
Internet traffic is doubling every four months, whereas voice traffic
grows by 6-9% annually. This makes a significant contribution to the
overall growth of data traffic which has already overtaken voice traffic.
It is expected that voice traffic will decline to less than 8% of
total network traffic by 2004 and based on current levels of growth,
the entire traffic on the public switched telephone network (PSTN)
may amount to less than one percent of the total before 2010. Therefore
voice communication (the basic business of traditional Telcos) is
no longer the driver for communications network design and it is timely
to consider the means whereby voice and data networks can converge. |
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| Internet telephony, also known as voice-over-IP
or IP telephony, is the real-time delivery of voice between two or
more parties, across networks using the Internet protocols, and the
exchange of information required to control this delivery.. |
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| Most incumbent carriers have already begun to develop
data networks to augment their well-established voice infrastructures.
These incumbent service providers will link their new data networks
to the telephone system utilizing a new infrastructure. |
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| Internet carriers have already started to enter
the competition by proposing cheap long distance voice calls over
their data networks. Those focus exclusively on building data infrastructures
capable of carrying both voice and data traffic from the start. |
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| The short term effect of this process will be to
enable new voice servics to be introduced at competitive rates compared
to those of existing services. Ultimately however, wide deployment
of IP telephony will cause a wave of new applications and services
that will fundamentally change the way people use technology to communicate.
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| As we move towards a new era in global telecommunications
(where voice and data solutions are provided across IP infrastructures),
standards continue to play a key role. |
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