IP telephony (also known as voice over IP or VoIP) provides voice services over high-speed IP networks. While we are currently using a transmission protocol known as VoIP (voice over IP) this term refers to just one way of delivering voice over the data network, and really doesn't encompass future transmission protocols, so we are now referring to this method of voice delivery as IP telephony.
Traditionally, IP telephony had sound quality and reliability issues. With modern networks and advancements in phone handsets, IP telephony is now being adopted by organizations worldwide as a primary voice service. IP telephony promises a greater range of telephone services, while reducing capital and operational costs over the long term. However, there are additional up-front expenses to deploy IP telephony. Expenses such as increased costs for power enabled switches (POE), and upgrading communication rooms on campus with redundant power supplies.
Due to these deployment costs, implementations must be done in phases and therefore UBC IT is currently deploying the service in new and renovated buildings across campus. The current IP telephony service on campus differs from some of the commercial offerings by providers such as Skype or Vonage. UBC's deployment is across a redundant and secure network, that ensures quality of service QoS across the network and emergency location information with connection to the E-Comm service. In contrast, commercial providers often can't offer guarantees of voice quality as voice "packets" often have the same priority as data packets and are not 911 enabled.
Enterprise VoIP or IP telephony shouldn't be confused with previous generations of VoIP, often commercial offerings which used to make "free" long distance calls between workstations over the Internet. The early versions of this software often provided poor sound quality and unreliable connections. Today, the technology has improved to the extent that with an enterprise infrastructure in place, people can make calls using a familiar dedicated handset/telephone with a sound quality and reliability far superior to earlier versions, and equal or almost equal to the regular telephone service. However, even though commercial providers quality has much improved, the link between the end user and their ISP is not guaranteed and therefore may result in lag. Actually, its a little known fact, but much of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) is digital as public carriers gradually switch to IP. At UBC, the IP voice traffic travels across the digital network on campus, but once it leaves the campus and enters the PSTN the calls are handled by public carriers such as TELUS. Therefore, regular long distance is still charged to UBC by the public carriers.
Locations & Availability
Details on current IP deployments on campus and future deployments.
