What is the vendor-neutral term for internet telephone service?

Question

Plug in phone to wall with ethernet cable
Someone calls a phone number
Your phone rings

What is the correct, vendor-neutral term for this service?

Unfortunately different vendors call this same service many different things. I would like to know what the vendor-neutral term for this type of service is. I have researched the following examples:

Comcast calls this service "Phone"
8x8 calls it "Hosted PBX" and "Virtual Phone"
AT&T calls it "VoIP Services".
Ooma calls it "Free Home Phone Service"
Jive calls it "Hosted VoIP"

I am confused by whether PBX and VoIP are the same thing since two companies selling the same thing are using different words for it.

With a thriving ecosystem for resellers, Google SEO/CPC has been gamed so hard that it is impossible to get any information on telephony service through them. — William Entriken, Apr 09 '14 at 17:20
@saltface for the phone company. Toll-free numbers are expensive :( — voretaq7, Apr 09 '14 at 18:51
@HopelessN00b sorry, I have included the research in the question. — William Entriken, Apr 09 '14 at 21:29
I left out one other requirement: if you don't answer the phone it goes to voicemail. After signing up for my VOIP with one provider, they tell me this is not a VOIP feature it is a PBX feature. — William Entriken, Nov 04 '19 at 14:58
I believe professional system administrators will be expected to set up phone systems, meeting the scope of Server Fault. If you disagree, please not before modding down. — William Entriken, Nov 04 '19 at 14:58
End result is I got banned from asking questions on this site based on this question. — William Entriken, Dec 18 '19 at 21:12

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 09 '14 at 17:27

6

VOIP. Voice over IP. It requires quite a few more things to be configured than plugging a phone into ethernet, but that puts you in the neighborhood.

answered Apr 09 '14 at 17:27

mfinni

35,711
3
50
86

and to be clear: for me as someone that want a phone bill and no servers in my office, is there a difference between VoIP, Hosted VoIP, virtual VoIP, cloud VoIP, or are all these the same thing? – William Entriken Apr 09 '14 at 21:30
2

Except for "VOIP", all of those are marketing terms and can mean whatever the vendor wants them to mean. If you're not an IT person and just want to make something work, hire an IT person or trust your vendors. – mfinni Apr 09 '14 at 21:32

What is the vendor-neutral term for internet telephone service?

1 Answers1