Telephony

Internet Telephony

Internet telephony is beginning to link the worlds of data and voice. Our goal is to combine the strengths of telephones, telephone lines, computers and computer networks to achieve the benefits of both worlds.

Our first two projects in this area are:

The Internet Connection Phone, which lets computer users hold voice communications over networks, using their PCs instead of telephones. It can work over the Internet, using either a LAN or a telephone line to connect to the Internet.
The Voice Data Gateway, which takes this concept one step further: it lets computer users use a single telephone line to connect to the Internet and and still continue to use the telephone line for normal voice calls.

Eventually, our goal is to make the Internet a full function platform for voice communications, in addition to text, graphics and multimedia - and to integrate voice and data communications seamlessly within the same network.

Other projects at IBM Research