Cookies, jpegs, ADSL, phishing, javascript, LAN, bandwidth, wi-fi, PDF, firewalls: not long ago jargon like this was unique to conversations held between IT professionals and computer geeks.

However, as information technology progresses, gets cheaper and becomes more user-friendly for businesses of all shapes and sizes, we are inching closer to the concept that internet language is not quite as bamboozling as we once thought.

We’re also becoming more proficient in using the internet as a business tool. Take broadband for example. According to a survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) of business use of information technology, 63 per cent of businesses were using broadband as their main internet connection type at the end of June 2005. Having increased from 41 per cent at the end of June 2004, there’s no denying that broadband internet connections have been adopted rapidly by Australian businesses.

Hand-in-hand with this increase in usage is the rise in confidence by businesses to embrace technologies born out of broadband. One of these is the neatly packaged acronym of VoIP.
You may be familiar with the term, but if asked to describe what it is, what it does, or even who uses it, many people in the MICE industry would struggle to come up with a response. And that, as chairman of Event Planners Australia, Ray Shaw points out, is because the use of VoIP technology in this industry is yet to take off.

“People are hesitant to get onboard with new technologies, mostly due to the perceived cost of time and money needed to get a new system up and running,” Mr Shaw says.
“And most people are heavily committed to their old technology. But as those systems break down, they’ll need to look at replacing them. And they’d be silly not to go towards VoIP.”
But what is VoIP exactly? VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. In a nutshell, it provides users with the ability to bypass the traditional landline telephone system (known as the Public Switched Telephone Network or PSTN), and instead send digitally-encrypted voice transmissions across the internet.

“Your voice call is converted to digital, just like an MP3 song file, and is sent over the internet. The voice call is then routed to be answered by another PC or a telephone,” Mr Shaw says.
Event Planners Australia recently adopted VoIP, connecting all of their offices around the country via VoIP. Mr Shaw says the system allows the ability for staff to make or receive calls over the internet to or from any telephone number worldwide.

“Calls are sent using VoIP to the local office, and we then make the call out from there. So if you call someone interstate, you can chat on the phone all day for one un-timed flat rate.
“We’re a big user of telephones, so in our case, VoIP has reduced our STD costs by at least half.”
When it comes to implementing VoIP, Mr Shaw says there are a number of grades which present different costs and flexibilities.

You could use a software program, such as Skype, which is downloadable from the internet and allows free voice chat over with other Skype users. However, if you want to speak with someone who doesn’t have the software program, and is on a traditional landline number or a mobile phone number, you will need to contact a specialist VoIP internet service provider (ISP), such as Engin or MyNetfone, to use VoIP to access the PSTN gateway – allowing you to make calls from your PC to the gateway then route the call out through the traditional phone network.

Or you could, as Event Planners Australia has done, invest in commercial grade VoIP equipment to replace your old Private Access Branch Exchange (PABX). Mr Shaw says the costs around doing so depend on the number of users but are at least as competitive as buying old PABXs.
He also says that as far as he knows, Event Planners Australia is the only PCO in the country to adopt VoIP to date.

Growth market
A recent study on VoIP and Australia’s broadband market found that there were a total of 411,000 small to medium enterprises (SMEs) using VoIP as at December 2005. While this figure is not astounding, the study predicted that VoIP services would attract six million small office home office (SOHO) and SME users in Australia by 2011.

Looking at the meetings industry specifically, Mr Shaw says VoIP has the potential to provide benefits to both PCOs and delegates of their events and conferences.

“Any PCO who has multiple offices would benefit from being able to talk more often at a lower cost. Hotels and convention venues would also benefit because any data point that can access the internet can be a VoIP point as well.

“But the real beneficiaries are the guests, delegates, sponsors and other stakeholders in the event as VoIP enables them to all talk to PCOs and venues for little or no cost.”
Mr Shaw says while VoIP is still relatively new – “The first real solutions only appeared a few years ago” – it is stable, mature, available now and here to stay.

US planners embrace VoIP

Fast working its way into the telecommunications infrastructure in the US, VoIP has been adopted by a variety of businesses in the meetings industry.

“However, there is much untapped potential for using VoIP at meetings and conventions here,” Washington-based technology consultant Corbin Ball of Corbin Ball Associates says.
“Some of the opportunities include its use in call centres related to conferences; for bringing desktop phones emulated on PCs to events; VoIP/WiFi-enabled mobile phones; convention facility staff using VoIP phones (and loaning them to planners); and inexpensive international communication,” Mr Ball says.

Using the VoIP software program, Skype, Mr Ball recently made several business calls from Frankfurt, Germany to his US-based office, plus a few calls to North America, all for the cost of US$0.80 cents.

Mr Ball says due to cost benefits alone he sees usage of VoIP by meetings professionals in the US increasing rapidly over the next 12 to 18 months.

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