
Voice-Over Internet Protocol: Protocols used to carry voice signals over the IP network … confused?
Put simply it’s a phone that works through your broadband system. The upside - it’s cheap to run and portable because wherever you can connect to the internet you can be contacted.
The drawback - problems with being unable to receive faxes due to some networking and software restraints, and loosing your phone connection when broadband connections go down - which unfortunately is still quite often.
Security can be an issue as at this stage with not many VOIP solutions supporting encryption as yet - as a result it may be easy for others to listen in or even change the content.