DATA VoIP SOLUTIONS: THE FUTURE TO COME
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Small Business VoIP
Small business VoIP systems can drastically cut the costs of running a company telephone system, while providing services hitherto unobtainable to small businesses. VoIP is not complex, and the terminology should not be frightening. Standing for Voice Over Internet Protocol, it is simply a means of using a telephone over your internet connection rather than through the normal optical fiber/wire connection on landlines. Wi-fi versions of small business VoIP are also available, which work in much as the same way as mobile cell phones using wireless internet technology such as Bluetooth. You can now use this technology in your small business at a vastly reduced cost over your traditional telephone system. Traditional small businesses, without the financial resource of large corporate companies, have generally been limited to centralized phone systems operable only within the confines of the office. This may perhaps be augmented with relatively expensive mobile phone cellular handsets for intra-company communication. By switching to small business VoIP, you can not only save over 50% on installation and monthly phone costs, but also use your company’s internet connection to make and receive phone calls. If the office has an internal LAN system, then all internal office calls will be free. Employees can communicate with each other without a PBX system or a central office location, and can also communicate with any other individual business through an internet connection. Another cost advantage occurs when you have more than one office. Calls between two offices are free, unlike conventional telephone systems. The many other benefits of small business VoIP systems include the facility to allocate toll free numbers to selected customers, to allow customers access to an internal company directory and to allocate special numbers to certain customers so that they avoid long-distances charges when contacting you. There is also the reduction in costs associated with employment of a receptionist. This position is not required with most small business VoIP services which provide a ‘virtual’ receptionist for the system. An excellent system which I have reviewed is Packet8’s Virtual Office which can be installed for only a few hundred dollars. Anyone who gas installed a traditional telephone system in their company will understand how low this is. If you want to read more about this just click here: If you decide that a complete switch to small business VoIP is not practical for your company at this time, it's probably worth your while to explore the possibility of a combined system in which you use traditional phone service for the bulk of your calls, but maintain one or two VoIP phones for long distance and inter-office free calls. You can also restrict the use of VoIP phones to named individuals by the use of dedicated passwords for each user. This increases security while allowing heavy phone users the use of the free services. Skype also offer small business VoIP alternatives. |
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