What every company needs to know about business VoIP and unified communications
A business VoIP solution is an alternative to a traditional switched voice service. Instead of using dedicated trunks between PBXs, you can share bandwidth with your data services, making better use of available capacity. Also, in today’s business world, the availability of a large number of Unified Communications features within the VoIP ecosystem is a boon for business communications at all levels.
No matter which direction your business is headed with an enterprise VoIP solution…the key is understanding how you communicate and what you want to achieve.
Searching for a business solution for VoIP, or more appropriately Voice over Internet Protocol, can be confusing for any business. There are many flavors of VoIP… and many pros and cons… to consider when considering which service to choose. The goal of this article is to help you navigate through the tech jargon so you can make an informed decision that will save you time and money.
BUSINESS VOIP
The first thing to know about business VoIP service is that it can replace your local phone company. Whether you only have a single POTS (plain old telephone service) line… or a voice T1 (24 bundled dedicated lines)… a business VoIP solution is designed to replace your phone company. Instead of using your local phone company’s voice connection, VoIP will digitize your voice signal and send it over an Internet connection.
In order for your voice to be transmitted digitally over the Internet, you must ensure that you have sufficient bandwidth to facilitate the communication link. To optimize the quality of your business connection, we recommend a minimum of one T1 line (preferably Ethernet fiber depending on the size of your business), a dedicated link directly to the Internet that is guaranteed to be up more than 99.999% of the time. Since you’ll be entrusting all of your business’ voice communications to this technology, your Internet connection becomes the critical link. You don’t want to risk a company-wide phone outage to save a few hundred dollars on your broadband connection. So always opt for at least a T1 line (preferably fiber ethernet) over DSL. It just makes business sense.
If you need help finding and provisioning bandwidth… we’ve developed software that will allow you to generate a circuit price in just seconds. You can request a bandwidth quote (as well as quotes for Business VoIP solutions) simply by asking at Business-VoIP-Solution.Com. Of course the budgets are free and without obligation. NOTE:… all circuits purchased through this resource also include FREE independent circuit monitoring.
Once you’ve taken care of your high-speed Internet connection, it’s time to select a business VoIP service provider—the company that will actually route your digitized voice signal to a real phone on the other end. In essence, your VoIP carrier will become your long distance carrier. The service providers we work with offer unlimited phone calls to the United States and Canada, all for one fixed price. For businesses averaging more than $40 in local and long distance usage per employee, VoIP is well worth the initial investment. In some cases, there are also very cost-effective options for international calls {just ask if you’re interested}.
There are also other hidden benefits of the Business VoIP service, the main benefit being the reduced bandwidth required to carry out a regular telephone conversation. Since a VoIP transmission only requires 32KB of bandwidth, you can repair up to 24 ‘VoIP lines’ in one T1 of data, and still have 768KB left for dedicated high-speed Internet access! This means you can migrate your entire phone system to your existing T1 and still have half the bandwidth allocated for data.
Another benefit of VoIP lies in the prioritization of the digitized voice signals that are generated when you speak. In case no one speaks, the VoIP line does not transmit any data. This allows your T1 line to dynamically allocate bandwidth as needed, rather than permanently blocking an entire channel of data.
Business VOIP stands for intelligent communications. Whether it’s call routing toll, unified communications (integrated phone, email, IM, etc.) or a dedicated application on the phone itself, the power of IPT is in applications. In fact, the robust capabilities and functionality of the unified communications applications available are a real selling point for adopting Business VoIP.
In a highly mobile sales organization, the “find me, follow me” feature can be invaluable. In an organization where deadlines must be met, setting up point-and-click call control can be crucial. Other organizations can benefit from high-level call log metrics to track billable time. Enabling true mobility in your workforce, enhancing video conferencing activity, and ease of use when traveling around the world are also very attractive attributes for businesses.
With so many features available on most platforms… you rarely see all users applying the same controls and features. It is the freedom to control communication at the single user level that makes VoIP a great business solution. In addition, the marriage of Business VoIP technology and Unified Communications features opens up a world of limitless possibilities and applications for today’s business communications.