There has been much discussion about various standards used in videoconferencing. Through the courtesy of Dave Agans, VP of Engineering at Zydacron, we are beginning a series of articles explaining what these standards are and what they mean to you. Communication standards allow different manufacturers to build products that talk to each other and to the telephone network.
Standards are like languages which have different levels.
But there are lower level standards for transporting English - it can be spoken, or written using the standard alphabet, or written using the Braille alphabet, or transmitted in Morse code. And there are higher level standards which use English - the vocabulary used by a surgeon or a football coach are not general English, but allow them to communicate in their own special areas. POTS, ISDN, IP POTS, the traditional phone standard When voice communications replaced telegraph and Morse code, Bell Telephone had to make sure all its phones connected okay to all its switchboards. They developed a company standard for the connection at the home. The signal that traveled on the wire was related to the sound that went into the phone in a standard way.