Being such a new technology you may be wondering is voice over IP reliable?

Standard Land-based phones are powered by their phone lines so if a power failure occurs they are able to stay ‘live’ because back-up generators or batteries residing at the telephone exchange keep providing power down the phone lines to the individual phones. With household based VOIP hardware utilizing broadband modems plus other equipment dependant on and powered by the supplied household electricity, the ability to use your VOIP service will greatly depend on whether or not your power supply and internet service are up and running. In the case of a power-cut or outage you could continue to use your VOIP service with the use of a uninterpretable power supply or a generator added to your hardware’s power supply line.

As well as the power supply issue, broadband connections can sometimes have a fairly undesirable level of reliability. IP packets can get lost or delayed at any time down the network between VOIP users, which will result in a temporary drop-out in voice. This is more likely in a congested high traffic network where there are long distances and/or inter-working between end points.

These points may sound drastic and make VOIP seem very unreliable, however, they really only cover fairly uncommon situations and as long as you do not rely on VOIP services for all your emergency calls you will be fine and most likely very impressed with the quality provided by VOIP. Try one of the many free VOIP services and see for yourself!