Nowadays, As broadband Internet access ( high speed internet )growing speedily (89.9 million U.S. households will have broadband Internet access by 2011—69.3% of what will be America’s then 129.7 million total households), Broadband Phone services and business are also growing rapidly. Vonage is a major Broadband Phone services provider.

VoIP Company	Price	Plan	Note
	$6.99	The World Plan from iConnectHere offers the best rates in the world, amazingly clear calls, and unparalleled flexibility.
	$29.99	Unlimited minutes to the U.S. and Canada
	$24.95	Unlimited calling to the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico
	$24.99	Unlimited local and long distance calls anywhere in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico and select European countries
	$21.95	Unlimited US, local and long distance calls,unlimited to Canada, Puerto Rico and 21 countries.
	$22.95	Unlimited plan includes unlimited minutes good for calls to anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. Starting as low as $22.95
	$24.99	Unlimited US local & long distance minutes
	$19.99	Unlimited calling in the United States and Canada
	$24.95	Unlimited USA Local and Long distance calling
	$23.97	Unlimited Calls to USA,Canada
	$24.99	Unlimited local and long distance calling in the U.S., and to Canada and Puerto Rico
	$19.95	Unlimited World plan lets you talk all you want. For just $19.95 per month you get unlimited calling to 21 countries including the United States.
	$24.95	Unlimited nationwide calling , Includes calls to Canada and Puerto Rico
	$29.99	Unlimited Nationwide Local & Long Distance (continental USA & Canada)
	$24.95	Unlimited local and long distance calling in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico

With  Search tool below , you can search the major Broadband phone provider's Plan and Price.

·    Select the VoIP service provider of interest.
·    Select the local or long distance option depending on their calling patterns.
·    Search for special VoIP deals.
·    Carry out advanced searches by VoIP feature.

For each search result returned your websites visitors will see the price of each VoIP plan, view the available features etc.

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Put VoIP plan search on your site

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You can also check our top directory where you can access an intensive list of Broadband phone, PC to Phone providers.

                                            Voice Over IP  Basics

VOIP ( Voice Over IP), which is a technology that allows you to make phone calls using your Broadband Internet (high speed internet connection, like cable modem or ADSL) connection instead of your regular phone service. Some people use VOIP in addition to their traditional phone service, since VOIP service providers usually offers lower rates than the traditional phone companies.

How does VOIP work?

A way is required to turn analog phone signals into digital signals that can be sent over the Internet. This function can either be included into the phone itself or in a separate box like an ATA, Analogue Terminal Adapter.



( A typical VoIP Connection)


(VoIP Adaptor)

Why use VOIP?

There are two major reasons to use VOIP
·    Lower Cost
·    Increased functionality

Lower Cost

In general phone service via VOIP costs less than equivalent service from traditional sources. This is largely a function of traditional phone services either being monopolies or government entities. There are also some cost savings due to using a single network to carry voice and data. This is especially true when users have existing under-utilized network capacity that they can use for VOIP without any additional costs.
In the most extreme case, users see VOIP phone calls (even international) as FREE. While there is a cost for their Internet service, using VOIP over this service may not involve any extra charges, so the users view the calls as free.

Increased Functionality

VOIP makes easy some things that are difficult to impossible with traditional phone networks.
·    Incoming phone calls are automatically routed to your VOIP phone where ever you plug it into the network. Take your VOIP phone with you on a trip, and anywhere you connect it to the Internet, you can receive your incoming calls.
·    Call center agents using VOIP phones can easily work from anywhere with a good Internet connection.

The features

Stay on top of your messages in more ways than you ever thought possible. Play back your messages online & by email. Get SMS notification of your voicemail...

Call Waiting
Call Waiting allows you to accept an incoming call while you're already on a phone call. Switching between calls is easy

Caller ID
Know who's calling before you take the call. You can tell who's calling you before you answer the phone...

Call Forwarding
Now you can send your calls anywhere you like to any number you want...

Conference Calling
Anywhere on Earth. With conference calling, you can connect with other parties at the same time...

Take it With You
The phone adapter available through is small and fully portable. Simply unplug the adapter and take it wherever you want it anywhere in the World...

Call Transfer
At the Push of a Button. Call Transfer allows you to direct calls to anywhere you
want...

3-way calling.  Three people in one conference call, allowing you to talk to your entire family at once.

Voice Mail : People can leave you voice massages when you are not available to answer the phone, when you line is busy

Voice mail to email :  Voice mail as an e-mail attachment so you can listen to it on any computer.

VoIP Terms

VoIP
    VoIP (voice over IP) is an IP telephony term for a set of facilities used to manage the delivery of voice information over the Internet. VoIP involves sending voice information in digital form in discrete packets rather than by using the traditional circuit-committed protocols of the public switched telephone network (PSTN=Public Switch Telephone Network). A major advantage of VoIP and Internet telephony is that it avoids the tolls charged by ordinary telephone service.

SIP
    "The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an application-layer control (signaling) protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants. These sessions include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution, and multimedia conferences." (cit. RFC 3261). It was originally designed by Henning Schulzrinne (Columbia University) and Mark Handley (UCL) starting in 1996. The latest version of the specification is RFC 3261 from the IETF SIP Working Group. In November 2000, SIP was accepted as a 3GPP signaling protocol and permanent element of the IMS architecture. It is widely used as signaling protocol for Voice over IP, along with H.323 and others. SIP is addressing neutral, with addresses expressed as URL/URIs of various types, such as H.323 address, E.164 telephone numbers or email like addresses.

SIP is a lightweight, transport-independent, text-based protocol. SIP has the following features:

* Lightweight, in that SIP has only six methods, reducing complexity
* Transport-independent, because SIP can be used with UDP, TCP, ATM & so on.
* Text-based, allowing for low overhead

T.38
    T.38 is an ITU standard which deals with sending fax messages over IP networks. It is used together with Session Initiation Protocol and Session Description Protocol.

The need for reliable faxing over IP networks (the Internet) has increased as the popularity of Voice over IP has increased. Faxes operate by scanning a document, converting the document into data, and sending that data as sounds over a telephone line to a receiving fax which decodes it. This does not operate correctly on many VoIP systems, designed to convert voice sounds to data over the internet, which lose tones required for faxing. The T.38 standard, when implemented on a VoIP ATA and on the VoIP gateway it connects to, is designed to convert fax sounds to data and enable reliable faxing.

FOIP
    FoIP, short for fax over Internet Protocol, the technology that enables the internetworking of fax machines with a packet-based network. Using FoIP, a fax is transmitted via the Internet rather than the traditional method of sending faxes via the telephone line. Using FoIP, the digital data from the fax machine is separated into packets for transmission (as opposed to the traditional method of converting the fax data into analog to be sent over the PSTN). The digital data requires less bandwidth than the analog data, so FoIP is more efficient than analog faxing.
Voice Activation Detection (VAD)?
    In Voice over IP (VoIP), voice activation detection (VAD) is a software application that allows a data network carrying voice traffic over the Internet to detect the absence of audio and conserve bandwidth by preventing the transmission of "silent packets" over the network. Most conversations include about 50% silence; VAD (also called "silence suppression") can be enabled to monitor signals for voice activity so that when silence is detected for a specified amount of time, the application informs the Packet Voice Protocol and prevents the encoder output from being transported across the network.
Voice activation detection can also be used to forward idle noise characteristics (sometimes called ambient or comfort noise) to a remote IP telephone or gateway. The universal standard for digitized voice, 64 Kbps, is a constant bit rate whether the speaker is actively speaking, is pausing between thoughts, or is totally silent. Without idle noise giving the illusion of a constant transmission stream during silence suppression, the listener would be likely to think the line had gone dead.

CODECS
   
A codec (Coder/Decoder) converts analog signals to a digital bitstream, and another identical codec at the far end of the communication converts the digital bitstream back into an analog signal.
In the VoIP world, codec's are used to encode voice for transmission across IP networks.
Codec's for VoIP use are also referred to as vocoders, for "voice encoders".
Codecs generally provide a compression capability to save network bandwidth. Some codecs also support silence suppression, where silence is not encoded or transmitted.

    * GSM - 13 Kbps (full rate), 20ms frame size
    * iLBC - 15Kbps,20ms frame size: 13.3 Kbps, 30ms frame size
    * ITU G.711 - 64 Kbps, sample-based. Also known as alaw/ulaw
    * ITU G.722 - 48/56/64 Kbps
    * ITU G.723.1 - 5.3/6.3 Kbps, 30ms frame size
    * ITU G.726 - 16/24/32/40 Kbps
    * ITU G.728 - 16 Kbps
    * ITU G.729 - 8 Kbps, 10ms frame size
    * Speex - 2.15 to 44.2 Kbps
    * LPC10 - 2.5 Kbps
    * DoD CELP - 4.8 Kbps

IP Phone
    A telephone that converts voice into IP packets and vice versa for voice over IP (VoIP) telephone service. The term usually refers to a telephone with built-in IP signaling protocols such as H.323 or SIP that is used in conjunction with an IP PBX in an enterprise. However, it may also refer to a software-based phone (softphone) that is installed in the user's PC and requires that calls be made from the PC
Analog Telephone Adaptor (ATA)
    An analog telephone adaptor (ATA) is a device used to connect a standard telephone to a computer or network so that the user can make calls over the Internet. Internet-based long distance calls can be substantially cheaper than calls transmitted over the traditional telephone system, and ATAs are typically cheaper than specialized VoIP phones that connect directly to a computer's Universal Serial Bus (USB) port.

VoIP Gateway
    A VoIP gateway is a network device that converts voice and fax calls, in real time, between the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and an IP network. The primary functions of a VoIP gateway include voice and fax compression/decompression, packetization, call routing, and control signaling.

IP Protocol
    The Internet Protocol (IP) is the method or protocol by which data is sent from one computer to another on the Internet. Each computer (known as a host) on the Internet has at least one IP address that uniquely identifies it from all other computers on the Internet. When you send or receive data (for example, an e-mail note or a Web page), the message gets divided into little chunks called packets. Each of these packets contains both the sender's Internet address and the receiver's address. Any packet is sent first to a gateway computer that understands a small part of the Internet. The gateway computer reads the destination address and forwards the packet to an adjacent gateway that in turn reads the destination address and so forth across the Internet until one gateway recognizes the packet as belonging to a computer within its immediate neighborhood or domain. That gateway then forwards the packet directly to the computer whose address is specified.

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