Digital techniques, already widely used for transmission of data, are now being introduced in the field of voice communications. By appreciating some of the long-range implications of this trend we can help point the way towards appropriate usage of this developing technology for improved customer service. This paper focuses on the voice problem and the possibilities offered by complete digitization of the voice signal immediately following the microphone. Included in the discussion are a summary of the properties of the speech signal and its potentialities for efficient transmission, a survey of the existing voice digitization algorithms, some examples of voice digitization implementations, and a brief treatment of voice packetization. There are some comments, near the end of the paper, on the possibility of digitized-voice inputting to, and outputting from, computers in an integrated telephone-computer network.