DISADVANTAGES OF VoIP

DISADVANTAGES OF VoIP

There are several pitfalls to using VoIP
services, one major pitfall is the problems with the
119 emergency services. Traditional phone systems
are able to pass the call origin, location, customer
information and other relevant data to the Public
Safety Answering Point (PSAP) facility, but on a
VoIP connection this capability may not work
correctly causing delays in emergency situations.
This is caused by the fact that VoIP allows users to
separate their phone number from geographic ties
that existing systems rely on. VoIP providers have
had to work extra hard in order to provide properly
functioning 119 services to their customers .

Usually call origin is determined based on the
customer account information generally collected
during account setup, however for the traveling user
this information may frequently change, and VoIP
providers have had to implement a means to allow
customers to rapidly change and update this
information quickly and efficiently regardless of
where they happen to be using their service. The call
must be routed to the proper PSAP facility according
to FCC regulations . As VoIP technology
progresses, this pitfall may be remedied by relying on
services already in development such as GeoIP
facilities, which create and maintain lists of IP
addresses and associated geographic locations. But
many believe this would be a bit invasive to privacy
and allow systems to be more susceptible to
eavesdropping.

Occasionally during peak call periods or peak
bandwidth usage, a disturbance in the connection
known as jitter may occur. Jitter is caused because of
serialization, packet queuing, transit delay, or either
slow or heavily congested links, this problem may be
alleviated but not fully resolved by implementing the
use of Quality of Service (QoS) control mechanisms
to classify bandwidth utilization for specific services.


Vol X, No 1-2 Issues in Information Systems

Collin Jackson, Texas A&M University – Kingsville
Jack D. Shorter, Texas A&M University – Kingsville
Karen A. Forcht, North Carolina A&T University