VoIP: not just price, but also quality

Many users of VoIP services, whether through VoIP handsets or their PC-to-PC calling software, are not aware that VoIP offers better voice quality than the regular analog telephone service. Not only does calling through the internet make things easier on the wallet, it makes things more pleasant to the ear, too!
Regular analog phone calls are transmitted at a frequency equivalent to 11.025 KHz and a bitrate of 21 Kbps, meaning the audio quality of a telephone call is half that of an FM radio broadcast (at 22 KHz, 43 Kbps) and just a fraction of CD-quality audio (at 44 KHz, 172 Kbps). Further, regular phone calls are transmitted in mono, hence sounding flat. VoIP calls, meanwhile, can be enjoyed in full stereophonic sound, as supported by hardware.
This development is due to the increased data rates and enhanced compression mechanisms brought about by the broadband/high speed Internet access accounts now prevalent among consumers. The higher the connection speed, the higher the audio quality. Hence, while some VoIP clients will work on a dialup connection, quality may not be as high as when connecting via a broadband connection.
While a phone call using traditional telephone will only be able to carry voice signals, a VoIP call is first converted and compressed by the system into small packets, which are then sent over to the correspondent, through the Internet. The packets are uncompressed and decoded at the other end of the conversation, and converted into voice.
VoIP has ushered in a new era, with better quality voice conversations at a fraction of the cost of regular telephony in the past.