Voice Over WiFi Technology Nowadays

VOICE OVER WiFi

Technology nowadays is evolving at rates that surpass anything imagination could perceive and the trend seems to be continuing much the same way. In term of communications, new technologies such as Voice over IP or Voice over WiFi seem to be the tools and ideas that will bridge the Internet with the old telecommunications requirements. Specialization is no longer a key word, since we all expect a tool or a function to provide as many facilities as possible. The Internet had several, from emails and instant messaging to information and video streams. However, it did not have voice facilities. It does now.

Voice over IP has its origins in 1995, when Vocaltec, Inc. released its Internet Phone Software that operated on the normal home PC of those times, with a 486 processor. Even so, VoIP had been discussed as a project for several years before that. The initial software designed encompassed the general idea used in the VoIP technology: the voice analogue signal were transformed into digital signals and where split in packages and sent as such over the Internet. The problem was that, for the technology to work, both the caller and the receiver needed the same type of equipment and the same software.

This idea was considered "the first IP phone," as it "enabled PC-to-PC Internet telephony." These beginnings encouraged the development of VoIP technologies especially within companies, in intranets and offices. Indeed, at that time, the intranets seemed to be much more secure and easier to manage than voice exchanges over the entire Web.

However, nowadays we are experiencing an expansion of VoIP technologies from the intranets out into the Internet, mainly due to the "the introduction of gateway infrastructure outfitted with VoIP technology" and, in my opinion, to the increased security facilities that will enable such communication.

Not surprisingly, if we refer to the it evolution and the way it has been going on for the last couple of years, VoIP is slowly becoming an elder technology and we are beginning to talk about Voice over WiFi, the next phase of the evolution of voice transmissions.

The WiFi technology is, as we may understand from its name, a technology that allows users to log on to the Net wirelessly. This type of technology is extremely useful for the many laptop users in the world. Besides, the WiFi technology is fast and, albeit being a "limited-range technology," it is at least an idea that can be made useful in several different protocols and technologies. This is how it became quite natural to ask oneself why not use wireless networks, just as much as intranets or the Internet, to transmit voice signal from one PC to another.

Companies such as Motorola, Japanese giant NEC or Nokia have already begun or are planning to commercialize models that use WiFi technology both for "data access and cellular voice." The problem with these primitive models is that they are still mainly oriented on data retrieval rather than optimal voice transmission.

However, research is well on the way and it seems that it will be less than a year before we can talk about Voice over WiFi or VoWiFi. On the other hand, it is obvious that there are several problems that the VoWiFi providers will have to deal with before the models are commercialized on the market.

First of all, there is the issue of security, something I have also referred to when discussing Voice over IP. The problem does not actually refer to security itself, but to the fact that voice transmission may be affected by the security protocols installed to protect the data exchange. In many ways, this is similar to what we are experiencing nowadays when we have a firewall installed. The problem with voice transmission is, however, that you have to have a fluent and cursive voice packages transmission, otherwise the entire conversation is no longer useful. With data, it is less this case, since the packages are not necessarily conditioned by their arrival at a certain time.