Small Business VoIP Service

Date Added: June 15, 2008 05:24:27 AM

Author: G5 Staff

After completing your research, you understand that your company can economize on long distance calls as well as local ones by changing to VoIP from a regular telephone service. You also understand that without much effort you can make an addition of voice services and not even have to purchase additional equipment. You will also have a telephone number that is not in your current area code and will experience savings on this combination of voice and Internet services.

The problem is finding a starting point in your search for the VoIP service that works for your company. To begin with, if PBX (private telephone exchange) is something you don’t already own, then you will definitely need to install it. It is a valuable product that changes calls between enterprise users so that a number of people, maybe at a business or school, can share in using a certain quantity of phone lines that are external. This saves everyone the additional charge of having a phone line that is external.

Setting up a VoIP solution for your specific needs includes the right services and equipment, and this is a very important decision. After installing a PBX, you have a choice of an end-to-end VoIP method or you can select the PBX in tandem with your more traditional telephone service.

End-to-end VoIP methods are less expensive, but are also not as reliable as the standard telephone systems. If the Internet Telephony Service Provider’s (ITSP) system experiences technical difficulties, your service can be inaccessible for extended periods of time. On the other hand, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) has what some refer to as the “five 9’s” of reliability – referring to the 99.999% uptime. Various setups allow you to gain access to this reliability without losing the positive effects of VoIP. It should be noted, however, that this could come with a higher price tag.

When choosing the cheaper solution (the end-to-end method), there are a few different ways to enact the communication. A prominently used method involves brining calls through your PBX via the ITSP. The majority of ITSPs are able to change the commonly used format of numbers on your existing analog lines or T1 service (T1 service is known as E1 service in Europe) to the service from the local phone company. The ITSP will convert the communication to be sent through the Internet. The calls, therefore, will either be transmitted straight to your PBX, or into a transition or gateway server that will decode the call for you.

It is imperative that the ITSP can transmit the phone calls in a language that is supported by your PBX or gateway transition device.

The reliability of analog lines to your PBX can help ease fears of business disruption. Because your analog lines would be 99.999% reliable, your business would not be at fault for any outages such as local blackouts at the fault of your energy provider.

Inbound calls can be transmitted cheaply yet securely through using a PTSN for incoming calls and an ITSP for outgoing calls that would otherwise be subject to the high fees associated with international and long distance calling.

In the event that your ISP (internet service provider) goes down, you can enact the option to route all calls to your standard analog phone line temporarily for as long as you have lost internet access. It will then subject you to the standard higher fees, but it will lower the risk of business loss due to your ISP’s problems.

In completion, changing from a classic phone setup to a VoIP system should be done in moderation. You may consider hanging on to your PSTN while only changing the PBX. This is a superior course of action because you can stay with the voice circuit that you already have, while just routing calls into the new PBX. By using your pre-existing voice/data circuits, you can save time, money, and stress.

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