Origination in VOIP telephony refers to calls that originate in the PSTN public switched telephone network and are carried to their destination over the Internet.

A VoIP call is initiated between two points, the initiation point is known as originator and the destination point is known as terminator.

An Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP) involved in the origination of telephone calls usually offers either or both of “PC to Phone calls” and “Phone to Phone calls”. The two major business models for VoIP Originator are “Prepaid” and “Postpaid”. Hardware requirements for VoIP origination are simple. The only hardware needed is a gateway that takes calls off the Internet and delivers them onto PSTN lines. All VoIP originators require a call termination arrangement with a terminator called VoIP terminator.