VoIP, Voice over Internet protocol, is in popularity these days, as it offers huge savings in the telephone costs. VoIP, sometimes called IP telephony, Internet Telephony, or Internet phone, uses a broadband connection with the computer to make the long distance calls, inter-state or local calls.

VoIP converts the voice into the data, and transmits it over the web, and then converts it again into a voice stream, and it can be run on any telephone in the world, in the same way as your computer transmits the emails over the web.

VoIP, economically, makes a better sense. Traditional phones are more expensive than VoIP. You simply use a computer or a VoIP-ready phone and a broadband internet connection for making the calls. International and inter-state calls are available at lower prices on VoIP. More and more home users and businesses are opting for VoIP, they have found VoIP as more cost saving, and also it has an attractive voice quality.

Now-a-days, twenty-two percent of the American people use broadband connection. If you want to use VoIP, you require a good bandwidth connection - broadband cable or DSL, a regular phone or computer microphone, and a special VoIP router adaptor for connecting the phone to the Web. You will also require the services of the VoIP service providers, such as Skype or Vonage.

It depends on the service that you use, either you can use the telephone that is connected to the VoIP router, or you can call directly from the computer, with the use of speaker and microphone. VoIP is not so expensive, and at an average it costs around $15-$65 each month.