More and more businesses are turning to the use of VoIP instead of conventional telephone systems. It’s easy to see why VoIP is so attractive, as it offers a number of advantages. These come in terms of cost, flexibility and more besides.
You can access a VoIP system from anywhere, which means you can have staff working from home or out and about on a smartphone and still able to make calls via your company system. They can receive calls via their DDI number in a way that’s transparent to the caller. As more people are working from home, this flexibility becomes increasingly important.
Call costs are lower for VoIP systems. Because there’s no physical PABX infrastructure on your premises, it’s also easier to add extra capacity as your business expands, either long-term or to cope with peak periods of demand.
Setting Up
So what do you need to get started with a VoIP phone service? First, you need reliable fast internet access. Ideally, this should be fibre optic, either broadband or using a leased line Ethernet connection to give you synchronous line speeds.
You’ll also need endpoint devices capable of using the system too. These can be a computer with a headset, or increasingly these days there are conventional-looking handsets available which connect directly to the IP-based system. If you have users with smartphones, they’ll simply need to install an app that gives them access to the VoIP system. But for any assistance you need on your technical equipment and to talk to a specialist in this area you could contact an IT Support Cheltenham company and one option could include https://reformit.co.uk/.
Pros and Cons
Thanks to wholesale VoIP termination rates, call costs are lower. But hardware costs are lower too. You don’t need exchange equipment on site, so there’s no capital cost or ongoing rental. You also save on power and on maintenance contracts.
While early VoIP systems may have suffered from poor call quality, that’s no longer the case. Modern systems offer call quality equal too, or even better than, PSTN systems. This, though, is related to the quality of your internet connection: the better your internet, the better the call quality will be.
One downside is that you need to check whether you will be able to keep your existing phone number. You also need to consider reliability. If you’re using a system in the cloud, you need to ensure that measures are in place to cope with failure.