The internet has changed our lives in ways we could never have imagined. Almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives have been affected by our love of the information superhighway. How we connect to family and friends, buy almost any product and manage our time has, to some degree, been changed. Probably the biggest change throughout the world is communication.
The way we talk to each other, the way we contact friends, family, colleagues and associates has revolutionised the way we live and do business. We no longer have to rely on the phone on our desk to make calls through traditional PBX networks. The internet has given us email, simple video conferencing and yet, the telephone still plays a huge role in business. Whilst the handset hasn’t changed too much, the way calls are connected has. We are no longer at the mercy of the telephone companies and physical phone lines when it comes to calling numbers around the world, we now have Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VoIP for short.
VoIP is a way of making telephone calls over the internet, rather than through traditional phone lines. Because VoIP is a digital service, the costs of the calls are lower than traditional phone calls and, in some cases, completely free. They work by converting your voice into digital information which can then be sent over the internet in exactly the same way as any other form of digital traffic, like email or web pages. It might sound like something from Tomorrow’s World, but it’s here now and can lower your business costs significantly.
If you’re running a business in these turbulent economic times, anything that can lower your costs is a welcome addition. With that in mind, utilising a hosted VoIP telephone system for your company’s telephony might just be exactly what you’re looking for. Hosted VoIP is the same concept, except another telephony company will handle all the technological heavy lifting, meaning all you have to worry about is making and receiving the calls.
The first cost benefit is the reduction in pricing of high-speed internet access. We’ve come a long way from the painfully slow days of dial-up. We now have incredibly fast access and the costs of these are coming down all the time, as the market matures and the barriers to entry are lowered. These cost savings are being passed all the way down the line, especially when it comes to VoIP.
Depending on the size of your company, your initial outlay in transferring to VoIP can range from a lot to very little, particularly when compared to traditional PBX systems. Again, depending on your size, the cost might even be zero. As we’ve said, VoIP requires an internet connection, but it also depends on how many simultaneous users you expect to have. The more users you have, the more bandwidth you’re going to need. If you’re a small business, your existing connection may be enough. There may also be a cost to upgrading your handsets, but many modern telephones are already IP-compliant. If not, you can always utilise so-called soft-phones. These are pieces of software that mimic the use of a telephone, but live on your computer as software. Skype is probably the most well-known soft-phone available.
The benefits of hosted VoIP don’t end there. The major selling point of VoIP isn’t just the technicalities of how the calls are made, but the calls themselves. Because you are using an internet connection, many calls become free. Calls that stay within the hosting company’s client base will also be free, as will inter-site calls between locations. It will only be when calls need to connect to external, traditional PBX-based systems, that costs will incur. You are also getting feature-rich packages including call-waiting, call routing, conference calls and even instant messaging for less than ever before.
Hosted VoIP also offers rapid scaling that is both easy and cost-effective. If you expand your operations quickly, the outlay for new equipment will be minimal and new staff can be up and running in no time.
VoIP isn’t going to be for everyone and everyone will have a different set of criteria and circumstances, but for more and more businesses, VoIP is a very real alternative in an increasingly virtual world.
For the best deals on VoIP telephone systems in Birmingham and across the West Midlands, contact us at Midland Networks today.
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