We live in an increasingly digital and largely networked world. It’s no accident that AoIP is taking radio and TV by storm: the economies of scale, ease of use, and return on investment are undeniable. Traditional POTS and ISDN phone services are steadily being supplanted by SIP- and VoIP-based methods at the service-provider level. ISDN is already unavailable for many new installations, and POTS is moving that way now. A SIP/VoIP phone system offers digital phone services that cost less, sound better, and are more easily managed than traditional services.

Bob Newberry at Clear Channel in Birmingham, Alabama, oversees engineering at 11 radio stations plus 4 HD signals.  Pushing the technology envelope means using new IP-radio technologies along with IP telephone systems - and both areas give Bob more options, better quality audio, and some money savings, too.  Joe Talbot from Telos joins me talking with Bob about learning SIP technology while putting it to good use.

Quadcopters? We just can’t stop talking about them! So, there’s that. And Joe Talbot joins us from the high desert in Nevada. With more and more broadcasters moving away from POTS and ISDN tech, SIP/VoIP is bringing better-sounding phone calls into hundreds of radio and TV stations. How do you get SIP into your facility? Joe Talbot explains.

Learning about VoIP? Here's a site that can help

More and more radio engineers are jumping into the world of VoIP telephony. It's no easy task, sorting the jumble of acronyms and alphabet soup that make up the VoIP lexicon. What's an FXO, and will it work with my DID setup? Where do I find a list of SIP response codes? And do I need to worry about IAX, or not?

Zephyr Xstream is the world standard for ISDN remote codecs. But it can also do IP remotes, and as ISDN circuits become harder to obtain, many stations are choosing to use their Zephyr Xstream's IP capabilities, which use industry-standard SIP and RTP to make connections over public IP networks.