Abstract
Significant research and development have been carried out recently in Voice over IP (VoIP) to integrate Internet data services and telephony services based on Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Satellites have been used for many years to provide long distance telephone services and have today an increasing portion of their capacities used to carry IP packets for Internet services. Therefore, convergence of voice and data is happening not only in terrestrial communication links, but also in satellite networks. With their global coverage and reach to remote areas, satellites are well positioned to enable growth of VoIP services. In addition to telephone and Internet services, satellite can also be used for multimedia conference services due to the broadcasting capability. This paper presents the studies of these topics as results of the VIP-TEN project on IP telephony and the ICEBERGS projects on multimedia conference over satellite. © 2002 by the author(s). Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission.