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VoIP allows users to travel anywhere in the world and still make and receive phone calls:

• ·  Subscribers of phone-line replacement services can make and receive local phone calls regardless of their location. For example, if a user has a New York City phone number and is traveling in Europe and someone calls the phone number, it will ring in Europe. Conversely, if a call is made from Europe to New York City, it will be treated as a local call. Of course, there must be a connection to the Internet e.g. WiFi to make all of this possible.
• ·  Users of Instant Messenger based VoIP services can also travel anywhere in the world and make and receive phone calls.
• ·  Specialized mobile VoIP services enable users to talk over internet protocol and use VoIP based Instant Messenger services from their mobile phones.
• ·  VoIP phones can integrate with other services available over the Internet, including video conversation, message or data file exchange in parallel with the conversation, audio conferencing, managing address books and passing information about whether others (e.g. friends or colleagues) are available online to interested parties.

One drawback is the difficulty in sending faxes due to software and networking constraints in most of the home systems. An effort is underway to remedy this by defining an alternate IP-based solution for delivering Fax-over-IP, namely the T.38 protocol. Another possible solution to overcome the drawback is to treat the fax system as a message switching system which does not need real time data transmission - such as sending a fax as an email attachment or remote printout (see Internet Printing Protocol). The end system can completely buffer the incoming fax data before displaying or printing the fax image.

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