Telecommuting and VoIP
According to a 2004 study of consumers by The Derringer Research Group, the number of teleworkers supported by broadband connections leapt from 4.4 million in 2003 to 8.1 million in 2004.
A number of VoIP softwares are there in the market for telecommuting. For example, the Avaya Inc. softphone. With a broadband Internet connection at the home, the telecommuter can blend in Netmeeting, The Avaya gear offers the flexibility of using the softphone or using an IP handset that connects to the corporate PBX via an IPSec virtual private network (VPN) connection. This gives end users flexibility and allows them to connect using whatever Internet connection they can get.
All the PBX features are extended to the telecommuter’s softphone or IP phone, including conferencing, call displays and call forwarding. Calls can also be forwarded to cell phones if telecommuters leave their home offices, and they can pick up voice mail and e-mail over the phone. Avaya text-to-speech software reads the e-mail. In addition, the remote workers can use speech access that listens to spoken commands to carry out calling or retrieving of information.
Recently Cisco Systems Inc. introduced VoIP phones that include VPN software, eliminating the need for a separate VPN router to tunnel calls over the Internet. This can reduce the initial cost of setup. Nortel Networks Corp. says its support for Session Initiation Protocol, while not new, is the most powerful telecommuter feature of its VoIP platforms, enabling workers to know the presence status of their co-workers and reach them by instant messaging, phone or videoconference.
VoIP technology in general lays the foundation for adding video capabilities, although these are not widely deployed yet. Voice quality over affordable broadband connections such as DSL and cable is too uncertain to trust to.