IP Phones

What is a Softphone and Hardphone and their relationship with VoIP?

Traditional telephones use phone lines that run back to your local telephone exchange to make phone calls. When you call someone, your local phone exchange sends the call to the phone exchange nearest the person you are calling and the phone company charges you for the call.

When you make a call using a hardphone or softphone and VoIP, your voice is first turned into digital packets which can be used by your computer. These packets are then sent over the Internet from your computer to the computer of the person you are calling where the packets are turned back into voice. The wonderful thing about this is that it does not cost you anything beyond your normal ISP costs!

Soft Phone - The term softphone is short for software telephone and that's just a fancy way of saying Internet type of telephone. They are essentially an Internet telephone that allows you to make free phone calls to other people who are also running the same software on their computers.

Hard Phone - The term hardphone is short for feasible or telephones one can physically touch or see and that's just a fancy way of saying Internet type of telephone. They are essentially an Internet telephone that allows you to make free phone calls to other people who also have similar equipment on their side.

You will of course need to be connected to the Internet to use these phones (soft and hard phones) and VoIP, but the actual softphone call costs nothing! And it does not matter if the person you are calling is across the road or on the other side of the world, since the call is sent over the Internet.

Examples of Soft and Hard Phones

Soft Phones

               
SJPhone                                  Xlite       

Hard Phone

Hardphones telephones come in many different types but the main groups are deskphones, analog telephone adapters (ATA) and cordless phones.

Deskphone - The term deskphone is somewhat obvious but in this sense we mean the desktop variation of the VoIP hardware telephone and basically is made to resememble the ordinary desk telephone. They are essentially equipment that convert voice packets directly to data packets that are transmitable over the internet. Thus one has an Internet telephone that allows you to make free phone calls to other people who are also running the same VoIP equipment or software on their computers.

              
BT100                                    GXP2000

Analog Telphone Adapters (ATA) - The term ATA is short analog telephone adapter for adapters that convert the ordinary telephones to VoIP compartable phones or internet telephone. They are essentially equipment allow you to connect your existing home phone handset to the internet. They do this by converting the analog signal generated by the ordinary telephone to data recognisable and transmittable of the internet and vice versa. This allows you to make free phone calls to other people who also have similar VoIP equipment on their side.

Analog Telephone Adapters a.k.a ATA's type HT296 without routing capabilities

286

How HT 386 works

Analog Telephone Adapters a.k.a ATA's type HT496 with routing capabilities

S486-160

How HT 496 works

Cordless or wireless phone - The term cordless phone is somewhat obvious but in this sense we mean the cordless or wireless variation of the VoIP hardware telephone and basically is made to resememble the ordinary wireless telephone. They are essentially equipment that function exactly like the deskphone only this time they use wireless to transimit data to a base unit which in turn is connected to the internet. Thus one has an Internet telephone that allows you to make free phone calls to other people who are also running the same VoIP equipment or software on their computers.

                            
P-2000w                                                p-2000w v2

Again you will of course need to be connected to the Internet to use these phones (soft and hard phones) and VoIP, but the actual softphone call costs nothing! And it does not matter if the person you are calling is across the road or on the other side of the world, since the call is sent over the Internet.