The Real Top Ten Reasons Companies are Switching to Voip

by Lisa A. Kaye

Published on this site: March 19th, 2007 - See more articles from this month

1. Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for new businesses or businesses in need of replacing their existing phone system.
   
   With a Hosted VoIP PBX companies get full use of a PBX without the costly expense of equipment, upgrades and maintenance. Small businesses can have the appearance of a large centralized business with a Hosted PBX by utilizing the span of features available.
   
   
2. No need to purchase new equipment or lose your investment in your current legacy system.
   
   VoIP providers over the course of time have spent so much in product development of their Hosted VoIP Solution that many of them are not offering SIP Trunking and many businesses do not realize the benefits of SIP trunking. SIP trunking allows businesses to keep their existing analog PBX and telephones.
   
   
3. Lower Monthly Recurring Charges.
   
   Bundling voice and data on to one network provides one solution, one bill and one provider. Most VoIP providers offer unlimited local and long distance calling and a good bundled solution should also provide a fast business class internet connection. The benefits to bundled services are that it maximizes the dollars a small to medium size business is spending on telecommunication services.
   
   
4. Over 70% of traditional phone bills are wrong.
   
   VoIP customers know ahead of time every month exactly how much their bill is going to be for all services except international calling. There is very little room for billing errors and crammed bills full of services not requested or required.
   
   
5. Cuts Operating Costs.
   
   VoIP solutions are software based and is easily updated, changed and expanded without further capital expense. The hosted PBX is completely maintenance free because there is no hardware. It is a virtual system. Unlike conventional legacy phone system that is hardware based and are expensive to make changes and require costly equipment purchases to expand calling capacity.
   
   
6. Streamline Communications.
   
   With VoIP companies can take advantage of simple 3 digit transfer to any supported property or office. No matter if one office is in Boca Raton and the other office is in New York the call is transferred as if they were in the same building. Furthermore businesses can consolidate call answering from a central location too. Eliminate the need and responsibility of every office location having to manage their incoming calls with centralized call answering.
   
   
7. Disaster Proof a hosted PBX phone system coupled with an IP telephone is disaster proof.
   
   Companies lost several thousand dollars because of the loss of communication during and after the hurricanes. The PBX is hosted off site in a secured facility with multiple back up systems and reroutes.
   
   
8. QOS stands for "Quality of Service" gone are the days of dropped unclear calls.
   
   Business class VoIP maintains a high QOS and technological advances in IP telephony transportation have made Internet calling as good as or better than normal PSTN connections. This is true for high speed Broadband connections and dedicated internet connections, whereas dial up services have some way to go before delivering the quality of PSTN calling.
   
   
9. Hybrid VoIP Solution.
   
   There are a few VoIP providers that deploy a hybrid VoIP solution that automatically reserves or routes resources for optimal bandwidth allocation. The system automatically ensures that the VoIP call has the bandwidth needed allocated from point to point before the conversation takes place. The second is prioritization: Here, the end point suggests a priority on the packets and each router decides if it will honor this request or not. Voice will always take a priority over data. A hybrid solution furthermore distributes the bandwidth that on a traditional system is not dynamic or flexible.
   
   
10. Multi Layered Security Unlike traditional service VoIP attacks are prevented because of the multitude of layers and encryptions placed within the provider's networks. The layered security approach not only prevents attacks, but the probability that if broached it will meaningfully reduce the probability that the attack succeeds.

Lisa A. Kaye has been in Telecom for 12 years and is currently the Director of Operations for http://www.intralinx.com who has recently launched a low cost
Red Bundle Box VoIP Solution for small to medium size businesses.