Voice over IP, short for Voice over Internet Protocol, is also known as VoIP.

Voice over IP refers to broadcasting the voice stream over Internet networks, instead of traditional PSTN telephone networks. The Internet Protocol (IP) was originally designed for managing data networks, and after its success, the protocol was adapted to voice management, transforming and transmitting information into an IP data packet. VoIP is now available on many smartphones, computers, and tablets.

Voice over IP (VoIP) can make tasks easier and provide services that would be difficult or expensive to implement using the traditional PSTN network:

• More than one phone call can be made on the same broadband phone line. In this way, VoIP can make it easier to add phone lines to the business, without the need for additional hardware phone lines.
• The features that are usually billed by telecom companies, such as call forwarding, caller ID, or automatic dialing, are simple with VoIP technology.
• Unified communications are secure with VoIP technology because it allows integration with other services available on the Internet such as video chat, instant messaging, etc.

This, and many other benefits of voice over IP, are making companies switch to VoIP-based phone systems at an astonishing pace.