VoIP: voice becomes data

VocalTec's InternetPhone let two computers talk over the public internet; engineers then built SIP, codecs and gateways until voice was just another application.

Why it matters

Voice joined the data network, collapsing the century-old separation of telephony and computing — the seam this site's author's career grew along. Skype, softphones and cloud telephony are its direct descendants.

Threads

This event sits on Communication.

Related events

• 1876

  Bell patents the telephone

  Alexander Graham Bell's patent — hours ahead of a rival filing — turned the telegraph's clicks into the human voice over wire.

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• 1983

  TCP/IP flag day

  On January 1, 1983, ARPANET switched from NCP to TCP/IP — a coordinated cutover that made 'internetworking' the network's native language.

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• 1991

  GSM makes phones universal

  The first GSM call was made in Finland in 1991; a shared European standard for digital mobile telephony spread worldwide, with SMS as an afterthought.

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From this site

• Journey · Voice becomes software2007 · VoIP Administrator
• Writing · From PBX to Cloud Communications7 min read
• Writing · What Twenty Years of Infrastructure Change Taught Me9 min read

Sources

• IEEE Spectrum — VoIP history