What is VOIP?  VOIP stands for voice over internet protocol and it basically means that you can make phone calls over the internet.  VOIP has become very popular in the past couple of years and there are now many new services that offer VOIP.  The reason why VOIP is so popular is because it is far cheaper than making phone calls using a land line phone service.

VOIP has been out for almost a decade.  However, when it first appeared, the quality of the phone calls was very poor primarily due to the connection speed of most people's internet service.  VOIP primarily works with a broadband internet connection.  Anything slower than a DSL speed modem and your call quality will be poor and chunky.

Broadband internet connections have a big enough pipeline to allow your phone conversation to run through it with practically no loss of sound quality or reliability.  VOIP is far cheaper than land line calling and most VOIP services usually save people anywhere from 30% to more than 80% off their phone bill.  Many services offer unlimited calling to residential customers for a low monthly fee, usually less than $25 per month.  The beauty of VOIP is that you can use your normal home phones hooked into simple phone adapters that are connected to your broadband internet connection.

There are many services that provide VOIP; the most common are Vonage, Cablevision and Verizon.  Other services such as AOL and Google are also looking to get into the arena.  So if you are looking to save on phone calls, look into VOIP.