Birmingham - The telephone has been around for over 100 years. Why would anyone want to reinvent it? Like so many tools that we use today, they have gone from being a specialized piece of hardware to becoming a versatile piece of software. Such is Voice over IP. The telephone has been a bastion of hardware dedicated to one function - carrying sounds from point A to point B.

Early data transmissions over the phone network were performed with devices called "modems" (modulator/demodulator). These devices took digital information and encoded it as sounds to go through the telephone networks. The only problem with this scheme was throughput. The need to handle large data volumes, like those needed to send web pages with graphics, drove the need to do point-to-point digital communications over the telephone network. Original implementations of digital network transmissions were kept on separate networks from voice transmissions. As demand for digital bandwidth grew, the telecom companies implemented intelligent switches that could handle both voice and data transmissions simultaneously. This was accomplished by converting voice into digital form through the backend telephone network and then back to voice before reaching the other end point.

The final evolution in the process of transmitting voice in digital form is called the last mile. The last mile is considered the telephone network between the phone company's switch and the phone on your desk or in your house. Voice over IP is the technology being used to deliver digital voice service over the last mile.

Once VoIP is fully implemented, all information traversing the telecom network will be in digital form. The only analog component will be the transceiver you speak into at the handset.