Product Description

Telephones have truly become an integral part of our daily lives, serving as our communication lifeline to the world. However, there have been very few advances in the basic technology of phone service - until now. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offers consumers a cost-effective alternative to traditional phone service. "Cut the Cord! The Consumer's Guide to VoIP" gives you the knowledge you need to decide if VoIP is right for you. It offers tips for selecting a VoIP service and advice for setting up your new service. It is packed with checklists, Web site resources, tips, and notes, and even provides examples of services that you can try before committing to VoIP.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2753195 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 340 pages

About the Author
Jerri Ledford jumped on the technology bandwagon nearly 10 years ago. She covered the Internet before the dot-com bust and came back for more. During her time as a freelance writer, she's had more than 700 articles published. Her work has appeared in publications such as: Intelligent Enterprise, Network World, Information Security Magazine, and many others. In addition to covering all aspects of cybersecurity, she has written on many technical topics including: application service providers, outsourcing, customer relationship management, business intelligence, storage, emerging technologies and web services. She also writes and teaches technology courses for organizations such as Hewlett Packard and CNET. Her non-technical writing has appeared in publications like At-Home Mother, Back Home, Baton Rouge Parent, Writer's Digest, Your Home and Family, and many more. Jerri has had two books published: Marketing Your eBook: The Only Guide You'll Ever Need (in e-book format, Robert's Publishing, 2001) and Web Services: Understanding Service Level Management (trade paperback, ContentCan Publishing, Ltd., 2002).

Customer Reviews

Good Introduction to What's Coming
The basic technology of the conventional telephone system has been around since the very beginning. You make a call and you get a dedicated communications channel to the instrument at the other end. And in the beginning that was indeed a physical wire. This wiring circuit was physically switched to your phone and stayed there until you hung up. Later Bell Labs was set up to discover how to get more signals through a wire than just one message at a time. Everyone knew that you could get more signal through a wire than just one phone call. And running all that wire was expensive, especially when it ran underwater across the Atlantic.

Step forward a few decades. The internet isn't circuit switched like this. Instead it's packet switched. A packet of data has it's own address as to where it's supposed to go and is thrown up on the network. It makes its way to the intended receiver. That's the way this message got to you. Suppose instead that that packet was a little tidbit of digitized voice. With the proper instrument on the receiving end (let's call it a telephone) the data is converted back into voice.

That's what VOIP is all about. To learn the details, buy this book. It's a complete description of what it's all about from equipment, procedures, and a bit of the background technology.

Only one last comment -- keep at least one regular, old fashioned, hard wired (not cordless) telephone around. If you have a fire, that knocks the power out, you want something that will let you call 911.

good guide
If you have been contemplating VoIP but are fuzzy on the details, Ledford offers some insight. She walks you through a good general guide of what VoIP is, from a user's perspective, not an engineer's. You can see that VoIP offers a far richer feature set than Plain Old Telephone Service. Though the exact features in a given VoIP varies with its provider. At least for US readers, the book summarises who the main providers are and typically what each offers, and for how much.

Also, the book surveys VoIP equipment and which you might want to get.

Of course, Skype gets prominent mention, as the best known pure VoIP play.

A great guide for the voip newbie
This was a curiosity read and I found it to be a very good guide for understand the basics of voip.

Overall the book is not highly technical. If you are looking to get to the guts of voip, this is the wrong book.

If you are somebody considering voip and don't know anything about it, this is the book for you.

There is a little repetition on some topics as Ledford explains the different approaches. However, the information in this book is very good. You get discussions, a sit survey list and many links for further research.

I did check many of the topic links and the tutorials. However, I did find a few that no longer worked or had been taken over by spam groups(pages that offer information links rather then the needed site).

There are chapters for setup, running and improving your voip experience. The trouble shooting section is ok but rather basic. But that is expected for a book aimed at the consumer rather then an engineer.

Overall; a very good book for the beginner!