Voice over Internet Protocol, a telecommunications system that uses the Internet or other Internet Protocol network to transmit telephone calls.
The VoIP Forum is dedicated to enabling and promoting industry-wide interoperability between products that send telephony over the Internet and private IP enterprise networks. This interoperability will allow seamless transmission of Internet phone calls regardless of the telephony application used by callers and call recipients. At present, applications from different vendors are incompatible due to fundamental differences in voice coding, silence suppression, addressing and dialing plans, call management and other related functions.
VoIP "represents a group of competing companies who've gotten together to agree on standards," Pulver says. "It's very important," and is good news for users, because their co-operation will move Internet telephony forward, he says.