Voice over IP is changing the face of telecommunication for the industry at a very rapid speed and people are slowly and steadily moving from there conventional phone lines to the VoIP based line. Even businesses have moved over to the VoIP based backbone for the telecommunication solution. World has started to realize the potential of VoIP along with its features as the technology is running with a rapid race leaving behind those who do not want to change. This revolutionary product has changed everyone way of living and thinking as at this time those who have been upgrade to new technology would certainly remember what it used to be a while ago. We are here to check that history of VoIP to make sure we have not left any chapter uncovered.

A small company by name VocalTec launched the first IP based phone software in the year 1995. This software was designed to run on a home computer just like what we use today with out headsets and microphone and all conversation were based on IP where system resources like the sound card, speakers and microphone were the only ones being used. The software 'Internet Phone' used then ITU standard H.323 protocol instead of SIP (which was not released) to commence the communication based on IP address. Initially this launch was a success as VocalTec continued to get an IPO in the year 1996. You can call 'Internet Phone' as the Skype of mind 90s which only had major drawback of non-availability of broadband connection. Most people ran the software on the modem based internet connection resulting in bad call quality and frequent disconnections and normal phone sounds much better than the 'Internet Phone'. But the first milestone was achieved as the first ever IP Phone was launched.

By the time in year 1998,surverys reported approximately 1% of voice traffic was originated from Europe and 1% from USA which was a hug amount and major companied and newer companied jumped into this new field and started making good devices enabling PC to phone and phone to phone communication bringing a drastic change in telecommunications. Networking infrastructure leaders Cisco and Lucent went on to introduce there new products and equipment that could route the VoIP traffic effectively and by the time we reached year 2000, VoIP traffic arose to a noticeable 3% in Europe and almost 4% in north America.

As the technology started to introduce great new features it also created big time loop hole in there programming structure. VoIP traffic was noticed and got priority over other forms of data transmission over a broadband connection using the QoS (Quality of Service) feature making sure the call quality is excellent without any major silent gaps and no dropped connection. VoIP equipment were made through and launched which major companies purchased. It was a record sale in 2006 when the VoIP sales touched £2.6 Billion and keeps growing at a rate of 30% per year. And it's been estimated the VoIP business would touch somewhere around £5 Billion by end 2008.

VoIP offers great communications through Audio and Video together going through same medium.