20 years of Vocaltec Internet Phone, the first VoIP software

20 years of Vocaltec Internet Phone is met, the pioneering system of voice communications over IP (VoIP), which today is fully integrated into many services.

Today there are very settled in our daily lives that have not always been there, or at least as clear concepts. One is the free media (audio and video) in Internet services like the legendary Skype u others like Hangouts or Facetime. As I say, they were not always so accessible, until 20 years ago led the Vocaltec Internet Phone, the first software that allowed VoIP, ie communication beyond traditional phone calls.

Vocaltec Internet Phone service was designed by Alan Cohen and Lior Haramaty, founders of the Israeli company Vocaltec in 1989. It is the first curious aspect of the 20 years of Internet Phone, since finding this type of computer developments outside of Silicon Valley so long ago was a rather complicated task. Also strange to try to get a service that digitize our voice and replicate what we did with our phone, precisely when the internet connection is running on a call. To do this, Alan Cohen invented the Audio Transceiver, which allowed transmit digitized voice is acceptable manner (within the context of the time), thus overcoming packet loss and latency in piping of time.

In 1995, Vocaltec faced various difficulties Internet Vocaltec Phone. Computers were very soundcard had obviously necessary for calls. In fact, the main limitation we had was that the sound cards available to emulate traditional calls. The most archaic sound cards allow calls half-duplex (type walkie-talkie ), whereas if we wanted to have a simultaneous conversation needed a full-duplex card , since they allow capture and reproduce sounds at once. For all this, people had to buy microphones.

The Internet Phone Service Vocaltec was not “free”. There was a demo version that did allow free calling, but only for 60 seconds. For unlimited calling minutes, the registration fee was $ 70. Therefore, solutions as we know Skype or MSN at the time were so revolutionary, making available to people the unlimited communication without borders.

Today company continues VoIP solutions provided, but far from the success that characterized it in the beginning. After losing big money, Vocaltec was acquired by another company called MagicJack VoIP. However, always remember as one of the companies with Vocaltec Internet Phone completely changed the communication, with effects that reach today. Free services like Skype Translator nunc have been possible without the existence of Vocaltec.

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