The Disadvantages Of VoIP

There are inevitable disadvantages of VoIP, despite the fact that the technology brings so many benefits to both home and business users. Many of these will dissipate over time, but a few key ones still exist in today's market.

Voice Over IP is an evolving and developing market, and therefore it is inevitable that as the product is in the growth stage of its development, there will be some teething problems that may frustrate the user. However, expect to see continued change and improvement over the coming months and years, that will further eradicate the disadvantages of VoIP that are listed below :

1. Call Quality Issues - a number of factors can affect call quality in a voice over IP network. Delay (latency), jitter, echo and packet loss are but a few problems that may occur that will have a negative effect on the quality of the call. Whilst a number of steps could be taken to reduce the impact of these, it is an inherent characteristic of VoIP.

2. Additional hardware expense may in many cases be a necessity in order to use VoIP in the home, and can prove to be one of the disadvantages of VoIP. This will usually take the form of a headset or SIP phone that will be plugged into the PC. Whilst costs are relatively modest, traditional equipment will be redundant.

3. Emergency Calls - whilst a user is directly identifiable when communicating via VoIP, their location is not. For example, a user based in London may be using their laptop computer to make a call from Chicago, and the end user will have no idea. Whilst this in itself is not a serious issue, it becomes one when the user dials emergency services. For example, the user in London who dials 999 may send an ambulance out – they will have no idea he is actually in Chicago. This is certainly not one of the advantages of VoIP.

4. Reliability – your VoIP service at home is only likely to be as reliable as your home broadband service. If you experience many outages on your broadband line, you will have interrupted service on your VoIP calls. This can be particularly frustrating.

5. Availability of the called party - VoIP relies on both parties being connected to the Internet at the same time in order to work. If one party is not logged on, they will not be contactable via VoIP, and will therefore need to be called by other methods.

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