What is VoIP for business?
VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol may typically refer to serices such as Vonage or Skype to place phone calls over the internet. In its simplest form, VoIP requires a regular phone, an adapter, broadband Internet service, and a subscription to a VoIP service. When you place a call, it is sent over the Internet as data until it nears the recipient’s destination. Then the call is translated back into a more traditional format and completes the trip over standard phone lines. Also known as Internet telephony, this allows for extremely cheap long-distance and international calls
VoIP for business or usually refers equipment such as NEC Phone Systems such as advanced IP enabled PBX phone systems - equipment installed at your business that routes internal calls over your computer network. With VoIP, you can unite multiple offices on a single phone system. No matter how remote the locations, a VoIP phone system can completely eliminate long-distance calling charges between them. However, it does not replace your existing phone service to the outside world.
Business VoIP systems can work for the smallest offices and the largest enterprises. In fact, IP PBXs will likely replace traditional PBX phone systems as prices fall and reliability improves, which helps explain why so many IP PBX manufacturers are familiar telecom heavyweights.
If your company has multiple locations – branches, telecommuters, remote sales offices – that are already connected to a company Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN), you are a prime candidate for an office VoIP system. You can share the full features of your phone system across all your locations. In addition, even if you have one office in Connecticut and one in California, VoIP allows calls between them via extension dialing, making it a zero cost call. For businesses with hefty monthly long distance charges due to calls between locations, that can be a very attractive reason to upgrade.
An office VoIP phone system can also save money as you are setting up a new office – you will not have to run separate cabling for your phone system. However, if you are setting up a new data network anyway, adding a parallel voice network at the same time is relatively cheap so the cost savings here might not be as large as you expect.
In many cases, the best solution will be a system that uses existing phone wires within the main office and VoIP for calls between locations. This combination works well if you have relatively new telecom equipment - many PBXs can be IP-enabled with software upgrades and minor hardware additions. Sticking with digital phones internally will save you money, as well as increasing the overall reliability of your phone system. Vendors can also set up systems that use only traditional lines and extensions at first, but support later expansion to VoIP.
