Communications arena has always been full with great inventions which have revolutionised the way people live and talk today. From the expensive era to the VoIP era which is here with amazingly cheap and quality calls, it would certainly be difficult for everyone to say how each service was in there own time. VoIP is a great technology which has brought something excellent to this world that would not be forgotten at all. It's something we have never thought and till date are still measuring its height as any new application's are dependent on VoIP.

PSTN has a big time competitor today and the power this new entrant has it amazing and ready to take over its opponent, the PSTN. Every day more and more people are adopting VoIP for there calling requirements and in no time VoIP has become a major necessity of almost every one including the large scale companies till the small and medium sized enterprises and stores. On can only compare what these two Giants have to offer the people.

PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network is what we have right now, a circuit switching technology which has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

• We are used to this well established technology worldwide
• Its easy to maintain such a technology
• Easy to configure and setup
• Very simple and easy to use

Disadvantages:

• You need a dedicated line for each connection
• Not very scalable
• No optimum usage of bandwidth
• Monthly rental and maintenance
• Every call is billed at standard rate

Lets checkout the advantages and disadvantages of VoIP (Voice over IP) which works on the packet switching technology and also has effective data transmission rate

Advantages:

• we can have concurrent data, voice and video calls
• its very much scalable as the base is IP
• Bandwidth can be utilized to server many purpose at same time as the data transmitted goes in a compressed format.
• Internet is used as the backbone and there are much less hardware required to setup VoIP
• Since all data transmission takes place over Internet, there is a massive reduction in calling cost as VoIP is a cheap, reliable and effective solution
• You can also enjoy the value added service either free or at a minimal addition cost.

Disadvantages:

• At times the call quality may suffer due to bandwidth issues
• Echo can also cause errors and can be removed by using echo reduction/cancellation feature in new VoIP systems

VoIP is getting perfect day-by-day and the disadvantages covered here are mainly found at the Service Provider's end. Therefore, think well and choose a reliable Service Provider to get rid of these smaller issues.

So, the question remains the same, VoIP or PSTN? I would suggest we wait until the launch of NGN (Next Generation Product) on VoIP technology which is going to offer a much better service with quality calls and reliability and stability of the system as well. For the time being made sure you run with VoIP and PSTN as your backup. So to be precise, use a hybrid of both VoIP and PSTN to make sure you have a phone connection at any single point of failure. This will keep you one-hand up to reach the next level with new VoIP product and service launches in future.