MyGlobalCity

Travel Agency VoIP Applications June 14, 2006

Consider: You’re planning a trip to Europe and you’re going to be joined there by a friend who will be travelling through Asia ahead of you. How do you sync up with each other without paying exorbitant cell phone or satellite phone costs?

Why, through VoIP and/or Skype, of course. Imagine being able to connect up directly with your friend through your VoIP-enabled phone, right from the travel agency. If you can touch base with your travelling friend, it makes it so much easier to make last-minute travel plans - something that’s still possible with regular mobile phones, but only in some countries, and at a high cost.

In fact, if both of you have Skype-specific VoIP phones (amongst others), you can talk to each other for free. Even if you just have plain VoIP phones and are both near a Wi-Fi network with Internet access, you can communicate on the cheap.

Alternately, some VoIP providers are offering their service using satellite systems. You are not using satellite phones, but rather VoIP phones over Internet provided via satellite. This means wide-ranging communication abilities, especially in areas that do not have access to the Internet. This will of course require a new breed of cell phones and smart PDAs.

But all this will be trumped by the other VoIP, Video over Internet Protocol. For many people, this means streaming TV over IP, but I’m talking about live video conversations. For example, if you’re travelling to unknown places, how much more comfortable would you feel if you could talk to a tour guide affiliated with your travel agency via videophone? Over the Internet, no less.

Or maybe you are supposed to meet someone in a foreign country. It would no doubt be nice to talk to them “in person” before you head over. Snapshots never quite do people justice. Of course, there are numerous other video applications, such as live support and video tutoring, maybe even real video-dating. And of course, there’s TV over IP, which is already poking its head.

We’re not quite at a stage where Voice/Video-over Internet Protocol is ubiquitous, but I don’t think it’s too far away. And if you think the Internet changed the world, I’m thinking we’re in for even more wonderful forms of mass communication on the Internet.

Tags: myglobalcity, my global city, VoIP, Video-over Internet Protocol