Verizon Overhauls to VoIP

With the immenant rise of Voice Over IP telephony, large communications corporations are faced with a conundrum of whether or not to proceed to the newer technology and compromise their success. Today Verizon, one of the nation's largest phone companies, has made the move to VoIP with the assistance of another telco giant, Nortel Networks.

Today Verizon Inc. announced their plan to completely overhaul their known telephony system and move to the up and coming technology of voice over IP. The company has allocated more than 3 billion dollars to this 11 year project. Verizon serves nearly 60,000 phone lines in the United States which are routed through more than 9,000 switching facilities, all of which will be converted. Although several major companies have expressed interest in the technology and even stated that they will begin serving it, this is the original complete conversion to VoIP. When in full effect, it is expected that Verizon's service will be both less expensive and more reliable than smaller start-up companies such as Galaxy Voice and Vonage.