Voice over IP

Voice over IP, commonly abbreviated VoIP, is a technology that carries voice conversations as digital data packets over an internet connection rather than over a traditional dedicated telephone circuit. The Israeli company VocalTec released the first widely used implementation, Internet Phone, in February 1995, software that let two personal computers each equipped with a sound card, microphone and modem exchange compressed voice data over the internet, an early and rudimentary system by later standards but the first to bring internet voice calling to ordinary computer users. VoIP's cost advantage over long-distance telephone calls drove rapid commercial development over the following decade, culminating in consumer services such as Skype, launched in 2003, and VoIP now underlies most modern telephone networks, including the internal calling systems most businesses use.