Three surprising uses for VoIP

By Lesley McCreath

VoIP Rides a Hurricane, Goes to War and Behind Bars

A truly robust technology is evinced in part by the variety and depth of its applications. For telephony, VoIP is just such a solution. Some surprising examples of what VoIP can enable have been making the news.

Hurricane Sandy

During Hurricane Sandy and in its aftermath, many areas were without traditional phone line service. A San Jose Company, 8x8 Inc., was able to bring service back using redundant data centers on both coasts that provided VoIP Virtual Office cloud communications.

In a disaster, there is automatic failover if either data center goes down. Customers and rescue workers have full emergency services, including PBX, voice and data and voicemails, with either data center capable of handling 8x8’s entire customer load. In a release from 8x8, Ken Katz, president of ICS Software Ltd, a family-run business in Oceanside, New York, said that when their systems went down, they availed 8x8’s business phone service “so that our employees could immediately begin working from home using soft phones.”

Premise-based phone systems are vulnerable to onsite destruction. With VoIP, business or emergency calls are not tied to any one device or physical location. With cloud-based telephony, systems can be configured on the fly, offering vital features as well as data backup for business continuity in a disaster.

VoIP for the DOD

The Department of Defense even recognizes the security the VoIP Mobile Communications Infrastructure offers. Apriva, an Arizona-based VoIP provider, just announced a DOD contract they were awarded to enhance their mobility gateway enabling “the Department of Defense to deliver classified voice and data communications to commercially available smartphones.”

This system can be quickly deployed, using off-the-shelf devices like Android phones, combined with the latest encryption software to provide gateway communications between national leaders and war fighters, and just like in the private sector, a VoIP solution also saves the military money.

Behind Bars

Saving money was the key point in a recent announcement from ColdCribCommunications.com, a VoIP services provider with the stated mission of “helping users get in touch with their loved ones.” Where those loved ones are is the surprising part of this story, because ColdCrib takes VoIP behind bars. They are the “leader in VoIP services dedicated to families of the incarcerated.” Their release notes that telephone rates in some prisons can be as high as $18 for a fifteen minute call, with a $4.50 charge just for accepting the call from jail. Low-income families are hit with very high rates if they want to talk with their loved-ones in jail.

To address this, ColdCrib will now provide “true, unlimited jail calls from inmates to their loved ones on the outside.” It’s not free - there are some contract fees VoIP can’t avoid in working with the prison system, but that $18 fifteen-minute call becomes a much more affordable $2.36 charge to talk to dad on father’s day.