The sound was slightly muffled, and the quality was not quite as good as my switched line. Quality and reliability must be proved before VOIP heads into the mainstream. Expectations in the voice world hold that the technology must always work. VOIP must at least equal that performance. And if it is to take over, VOIP has to handle many millions of calls daily.
Quality is only part of the story.
Making phone calls using the same network protocol as the Internet is the smaller story. Creating a single unified network that handles all of a company's voice and data traffic is arguably the biggest incentive for IT to hop on the VOIP bandwagon. The appeal from an applications standpoint is the realization of unified messaging, combining fax and multicast services as well as voice. What's more, phones and PC apps will run off the same networks and computers, introducing tantalizing integration possibilities. As with all such lofty goals, what is technologically feasible and logical takes years to gain mainstream traction.