Bell Telecom is first RP firm to offer VoIP

Bell Telecommunication Philippines Inc. (BellTel) will become the first local telecommunications company to commercially offer voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a technology that allows users to make telephone calls through the computer.

BellTel vice president for sales and marketing Joby de Belen said the company will start offering VoIP services by next month through its various access technologies, namely, fiber optic, cable, wireless, digital subscriber line (DSL) and even through satellite.

"We are currently in the final phase of our field tests and we are confident that we can roll out our VoIP services by next month. Initially, we will be providing VoIP through our fixed-line network but we will be offering the service through our various access technologies as well," De Belen said.

VoIP enables the user to make telephone calls and send data over Internet Protocol-based data networks with a suitable quality of services (QoS). It employs a process of disassembling and reassembling analog voice signals into digital bits. These are sent through the IP network as data packets.

By offering VoIP, BellTel becomes the first Philippine telecommunications company to commercially implement VoIP. Currently, the use of VoIP has been limited to several large enterprises.

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has already ruled that only telecommunications carriers will be allowed to offer VoIP services.

NTC is still preparing the rules that will govern the offering of VoIP. Right now, it is the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that have been offering voice over the Internet, but local telephone companies say that this has been taking away revenues, especially from International calls, from them.

"By providing high quality voice services over IP we are making an important step towards the convergence of voice, fax, video, and data communications services," De Belen explained.

"Furthermore, users of the service will be able to benefit from the market improvement in voice quality since this service utilizes a fully digital technology," he added.

He also noted that the company could assure the quality of service because it will only utilize VoIP from the customers’ end to BellTel’s fully-ATM (asynchronous transfer mode)-based network. From there the calls will be made to pass through BellTel’s circuit-switched network.

De Belen said large telecommunications companies in the US and other countries are currently using this type of VoIP implementation.

BellTel is a full-service telecommunications company that specializes in delivering Next Generation communications solutions to business enterprises and the high-end consumer market through various access technologies such as fixed wireless, cable, fiber optic, DSL, and satellite.