The agency behind the research, Point Topic has reported the presence of over a hundred million VoiP subscriptions in total, with around 12 million fresh subscribers signing up to the service in the year’s first half.

The research has also cited as the predominant reason for the growth of the VoIP service uptake, the widespread populariy of the broadband internet bundles that feature VoIP as an add on service. Under a fifth of homes in the United Kingdom have purchased the add on as part of heir subscription.

France is the country that tops the list of the countries with the maximum VoIP uptake. A little more than nine out of ten subscriptions in the country consume the service, including 70 per cent of the total homes in the country. Japan with its 70 per cent of homes subscibed to the service, follows closely.

When it comes to the maximum number of VoIP subscriptions, the United States of America tops the list with its approximately 23 million homes subscribing to it. The sixth place was occupied by Canada that became the the only non-European country making it to the top ten list.

Likewise, VoIP also holds another advantage of being used with a mobile broadband internet connection and a mobile device such as a laptop, netbook or smartphone. The edge of allowing the customer to make cheap calls on the move is obviously something that has caught the eyes of business people.

To run the VoIP application the customer has a couple of options in terms of hardware requirement. The first one is to engage a team of a fast broadband internet connection and a computer (the latter can be a PC, netbook or laptop notebook). Here even if the customer has these things ready he would need a telephone set or a headset.

The other option is using a soft phone (IP Phone) or ATA devices (analogue telephone adaptor), in which case the consumer need not go for a computer at all. However, an internet connection is still required.

This means, the user of a soft phone or an analogue telephone adaptor device can make or receive calls without the help of a computer. Meanwhile, the consumer that uses an internet- computer package to access internet telephony service would need to keep his computer on and even a power failure can result in forcing him to terminate the call abruptly.

Meanwhile, VoIP technology enables the customers to call and receive calls at considerably lesser rates compared to the traditional telephone service or public switched telephone network of the country.

This advantage over the rival service with VOIP is due to its working mode of converting voice signals to digital information (digital data packets). The customers can use the service with the help of a broadband internet service and computer with headset or through an IP phone. Customers using an IP phone does not necessarily require a PC or a laptop to access VoIP service.

VoIP service allows its consumers to make calls to anywhere including to the PSTN lines of the country. It also allows the consumers to receive calls from anywhere including PSTN lines. VoIP service also allows cheap international calls, and calls to mobile phones.

Above all, the most significant benefit with the VoIP service is its capability to allow its customers to make and receive calls while on the move.

VoIP

The basic requirements for running a VoIP application is a reasonably fast internet connection – dial up internet connection with just 54Kbps access speed is not recommended since its speed just about makes it to the minimum speed required by the VoIP to run, which may result in poor audio quality and even abrupt call disconnections – and hardware such as a PC and headsets or an IP phone.

One of the most attracting aspects of VoIP calling using a broadband internet connection is its allowing the customer to surf the web and make a call simultaneously.  Nonetheless, it should also be noted that with a slow internet connection such as the one provided by dial up internet technology can cause call disconnections while surfing the web, due to its slow speed.

Even slow broadband connections could also face the same trouble while downloading heavier files or applications simultaneously with VoIP calling.

To avoid this the customer that needs to surf the web seriously while making and receiving calls through internet telephony services, should see that he secures a broadband/mobile broadband connection delivering at least speeds of around 256Kbps. If the person’s downloading extent is higher, he should be choosing higher speeds accordingly.

However, according to experts, a 56Kbps internet connection speed is adequate for running VoIP and for smooth running they have advised a minimum internet access speed of 90Kbps.

The functioning of the VoIP internet telephony system is through a simple process of converting the analogue voice signals into digital data packets. This in its turn helps VoIP to considerably reduce call charges.

Although, VoIP internet telephony is fast becoming popular among business and home circles in the United Kingdom, there are a number of people as well that seem reluctant to take up the new relatively new technology, mainly on the grounds that the system could go useless at the time of power failures and they might face the problem of incompetent voice quality.

These points should be deemed seriously as probabilities, since VoIP cannot run without the help of the internet (preferably broadband internet network), which in its turn requires power to function, and slowness in internet connection speeds with the system may result in poor voice quality or even abrupt disconnection of the calls.

However, there is a system for rating the quality of voice rendered by VoIP services. This system is called MOS or Mean Option Score, and ITU-T stands to standardised voice quality. The MOS graduates on a scale of 5 points with point 5 announcing the best voice quality.