You've heard the buzzwords - SoftPhone. Smart phone. Disposable phones. Internet Telephony. They sound intriguing but what can they do for me?

The short answer is "lots". As in saving you LOTS of money and giving you access to LOTS of information. The phones of the future are bonafide personal digital assistants, allowing you to browse the internet, check your appointments, send e-mail, or participate in a multimedia conference call.

Sounds great, but what exactly is a softphone? Smart phone? Disposable phone? How do these technologies work and why should I care?

Softphones are not really phones at all but rather PCs loaded with software that effectively transform your PC into a phone. Using your PC as a phone has several advantages. PCs send voice signals over data cables rather than over conventional telephone lines, saving money on long distance calls. When you send and receive calls as data, or as packet-switched calls, you don't have to pay the international cost to transmit the data. You pay purely the local connection cost to your ISP. Bottom line - savings on each long distance call you make.

The concept has been around for a decade, but only recently has the reliability of computer networks reached a level where softphone communication can be an effective alternative to traditional telephone use. So more and more people are using softphones. But it 's not only the cost savings on long distance calls - think bigger.

Business can save money by not purchasing the telephone in the first place. Instead of hefty start up costs, they can slash their start-up budget drastically by not having the expensive outlay for desktop phone consoles. And, if a new start-up is laying down wiring, cost savings really add up by installing only two (voice/data and electrical) rather than three (electrical, data, and voice) sets of cables.

If one considers the advantages of Internet Telephony technology, the answer, in pure economical terms, is clear. Call centers will be embracing Internet Telephony to lower capital expenditures (facilities and cabling), lower overhead expenses (by consolidation of MIS and telecommunications functions), lower desktop expenses (by removing the console in favor of a soft-phone), improve customer satisfaction (integrated messaging), improve agent productivity (in a highly competitive and labor-intensive environment), and quickly implement future productivity enhancements (by rapid dissemination of future software upgrades).

Avaya, one of the worlds leading traditional telecommunications manufacturers and now also a manufacturer of IP softphones, estimates that worldwide, LAN-based IP telephony will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 70% through to 2005, with IP enhanced PBXs growing at rates topping 90% over the same period.

Although it will take some time to happen, you can be sure that, eventually, all of the circuit-switched networks will be replaced with packet-switching technology. IP telephony just makes sense, in terms of both economics and infrastructure requirements. More and more businesses are installing VoIP systems, and the technology will continue to grow in popularity as it makes its way into our offices and our homes. Things are changing right now. According to a new study, published by Sage Research Inc., 86% of US organizations surveyed report they are in various stages of evaluating or deploying IP telephony. This is the technology of tomorrow but the cost savings and business economies mean it will very quickly be a standard part of every PC.

Smart Phones

Smart phones are generally mobile phones with enhanced display capabilities and new functionalities that let you access e-mail, faxes, your company intranet and the Internet easily and quickly. Or, think of it this way-Smartphones are an all-in-one communication device that combine the functionality of a pager, phone and PDA. Currently, the penetration rate for mobile and wireless devices in the US is 40% - or about 74 million mobile phones in use in the United States today. This compares to 65% penetration in Europe or 176 million mobile phones in use today. According to International Data Corp.'s most recent estimates, by 2003, US penetration is predicted to rise to 50% or about 139 million and by 2007, the figure is expected to reach 60% in the U.S. worldwide, analysts expect more than one billion mobile phones to be in use by 2003. It is expected that a growing proportion of these mobile phones will be smartphones, utilizing wireless technology and high speed data transfer to deliver multimedia information at the touch of a button or the sound of a word.

Disposable Phones!

Disposable cameras sure caught on. What about disposable mobile phones? Recently a number of wireless telephone manufacturers have introduced low-cost models, pre-loaded with a finite number of calling minutes, designed to be used once and then discarded. The phones themselves are stripped-down versions of their more expensive brethren-offering in the case of some phones just the ability to make a single phone call. Voice mail and other amenities, standard for most wireless phones, are not part of the disposable phone's package of services. The target customers for disposable mobile phones are teenagers, students, or people, such as seniors and vacationers, who simply need a telephone for emergencies. The disposables could also have considerable potential in parts of the world such as Latin America, where wireless phones already provide an important alternative to inadequate and prohibitively expensive fixed-line service. These multicolor plastic phones will be sold over the counter at the nearest convenience store, gas station, or drugstore to anyone who can afford the $10-$30 to buy one .

How does Plantronics fit into this brave new world?