VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is a method of sending voice/multimedia data over the internet. It provides sending voice data in packets across IP, instead of via traditional public switched telephone networks. VoIP Industry is also known as the Internet telephony, broadband telephony, and broadband phone service.
Before VoIP, this connection was made through physical cables between operators. With the development of the internet and technology, long-distance phone calls became much easier. VoIP has several important milestones in its history that have changed the world.
The First Roots of VoIP Industry
In 1928, the Vocoder was the first electronic voice synthesizer, invented by AT&T. The sounds that got out from mouths were analyzed and recreated by the vocoder which is similar to today’s packet transmission. On the other hand, the vocoder was not only used for communication; during the II. World War, also used to transmit secret messages.
The Early 1900s
Thanks to the Internet connection, it could be possible to deliver the voice through IP phones. In the early 1900s, the first IP telephony was tested by VocalTec, who created the first internet phone. Alon Cohen, the co-founder of VocalTec Inc., has a crucial role in VoIP industry history; because, he invented the audio transceiver that enabled the creation of voice over network products. Additionally, he invented some other VoIP components such as telephony gateways and switching servers.
The Late 1900s
In 1973, a form of voice package was demonstrated by Dany Cohen who is an Israeli American computer scientist; it specialized in computer networking from ARPAnet, as a flight simulator application. However, the real-time voice communication was impossible with uncompressed pulse-code modulation (PCM) that are digital speech packets; because, digital speech packets had a bit rate of 64 kbps which was greater than 2.4 kbps bandwidth. Accordingly, they need a speech compression and coding data algorithm. Therefore, the linear predictive coding (LPC) was the solution. In 1974, the first real-time conversation took place by ARPAnet. In today’s VoIP technology, LPC algorithms are still using.
In 1989, a software product created to let game players talk to each other while playing video games over their dialup modems. At first, it was called RASCAL (Remote Audio Sound Card Application Link); as time went by, it developed and took the name as Speak Freely which is the first software-based VoIP phone in 1995.
The development of new internet technologies applied to VoIP services. In 1999, the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) was developed for real-time multimedia communication sessions for voice and video calls between groups and participants.
The 2000s
In the early 2000s, the number of commercial VoIP service providers increased day by day. The development of the new internet technology systems applied to VoIP services. In today’s world, this technology is used by well-known tech firms applications such as Skype, FaceTime, and WhatsApp.
A New Era in VoIP History
Nowadays, thanks to the investment in the technology of companies, some brands started to play a crucial role in this sector. Sigma Telecom became the leader in the telecom and mobile industry with its breakthroughs in the sector. As a wholesale VoIP provider, Sigma Telecom opened a new era with high-quality voice traffic, cost-saving rates, direct interconnections with big operators and more than 500 companies globally.