Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "VOIP Providers" report to their offering.

VoIP specifies the transmission and reception of audio over the Internet. A connection between caller and call recipient is established using the SIP. SIP has many functions, including negotiating the codecs used during the call, transferring calls, and terminating calls. Over the past five years it has become increasingly difficult to keep an overview of all the worldwide operating VoIP services or Broadband phone providers. New VoIP / Broadband phone VoIP services are launching almost on a weekly basis and it has become almost impossible to compare PC to Phone and Broadband Phone service providers without weeks and weeks of time consuming research. Each VoIP provider proclaims to have the best service and the cheapest local, long distance or international VoIP phone rates, but the differences are still substantial (up to 1000%), although in most cases the VoIP services are cheaper than most traditional telephone companies. Choosing the right Voice over IP service for your specific need and calling pattern, especially if you make regular international calls can save you a small fortune every month.

The VoIP protocol suite is generically broken into two categories, control plane protocols and data plane protocols. The control plane portion of the VoIP protocol is the traffic required to connect and maintain the actual user traffic. It is also responsible for maintaining overall network operation (router to router communications). The data plane (voice) portion of the VoIP protocol is the actual traffic that needs to get from one end to another.