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I’ve written so many articles over the years about VoIP, that I sometimes forget that I need to explain what VoIP stand for (voice-over-IP).

Yet I should keep defining the term. Even though VoIP has been around for 20 years, most people still are sketchy in their knowledge of the technology.

This has implications for VoIP suppliers and consumers alike.

A recent survey conducted by Software Advice, a consultancy, shows exactly how little people know about VoIP. In the survey, roughly 71 percent of people could not define the term. This was even among the younger generation; 55 percent of those surveyed between the ages of 25 and 34 didn’t know VoIP.

More telling and useful, though, are the concerns and misconceptions about VoIP that were uncovered by the survey.

The biggest concern was not call quality, which many in the industry think is the most important concern. The biggest concern actually was maintaining dial tone in a power outage (this, in fact, is why my mother-in-law refuses to give up the traditional landline, actually).

Also concerning those surveyed was the need for specialized hardware, a throwback from the early days of VoIP, and VoIP security.

These are things that the industry has worked out, and businesses that are avoiding VoIP out of concern for these issues are missing out!

But the biggest finding, for me at least, was that most people did not realize that VoIP worked with mobile.

This is a big problem, because to my way of thinking this is one of the most powerful features of VoIP: The fact that it works everywhere, whether the home, the office, or on a mobile phone.

Clearing up this misconception also would resolve the concern about what happens to VoIP calling if the power goes out, because most people still have their cell phone if power goes down.

Taken as a whole, the findings of this survey paint a picture that businesses are missing out on VoIP technology because they don’t understand it, and the industry is missing out on customers because they are not properly articulating VoIP and its advantages.

It definitely is not time for me to stop explaining the term VoIP, apparently.