Digital Phone Service is made possible by Voice over Internet Protocol (also called VoIP, IP Telephony, Internet telephony, and Digital Phone) technology. VoIP is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or any other IP-based network. The voice data flows over a general-purpose packet-switched network, instead of traditional dedicated, circuit-switched voice transmission lines.

Protocols used to carry voice signals over the IP network are commonly referred to as Voice over IP or VoIP protocols. They may be viewed as commercial realizations of the experimental Network Voice Protocol (1973) invented for the ARPANET.

Voice over IP traffic might be deployed on any IP network, including ones lacking a connection to the rest of the Internet, for instance on a private building-wide LAN.