I’ve been a happy but puzzled Vonage user. I thought I understood pretty well how VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls make it from my telephone onto the Internet, but I couldn’t figure out how they snake their way back into the phone system to ring a non-VOIP phone in, say, Malaysia (or Roxbury, for that matter). So, I called Vonage and asked them.

When you subscribe to Vonage, you get a modem that plugs into your cable/DSL modem. You plug a plain old phone into the Vonage modem so it can convert the phone’s analog signal into digital, package it into the sorts of packets the Internet expects, pat them on the tush and send them on their way. As Louis Holder, Vonage’s Executive Vice President of Product Development, explained, Vonage has done deals with phone companies in each of the cities where you can get Vonage service. The phone companies sell phone numbers to Vonage that Vonage then offers its subscribers. When a call comes in for a Vonage subscriber, the phone company sends it to a Vonage gateway co-located at the site, treating Vonage as one of its customers. The gateway then sends the call to the appropriate subscriber’s telephone.

But how about when a Vonage customer calls someone who isn’t a Vonage customer? Suppose I want to call someone in Malaysia? Vonage has done deals with companies such as Qwest and GlobalCrossing around the world, installing gateways that turn digital signals back into analog for local delivery. With the Internet, not only is all politics local, but so are all phone calls.

When I asked Louis how Vonage is doing as the telephone companies begin to roll out their own VOIP plans, he said that things are going great. “We’re able to pick the best rates for each market,” he said, explaining why it’s $0.02/minute to Hong Kong but $0.04 to Copenhagen. About the Big Boy competitors now offering the service, he added: “Their first year will be spend fixing bugs.”

By the way, I asked how they pronounce “VOIP” inside Vonage. It’s “voip” as in “void,” although they spell it out for newbies and customers. Now if we can only decide how we want to pronounce “GIF”…

[I am 100% certain I have gotten something wrong here. I’m sure you will tell me what.]

Categories: Uncategorized dw