Telephone Planet

In these difficult times, businesses everywhere are searching for ways to improve their image. This article documents a few of the little known advantages of VOIP business phone systems. VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) business systems offer one clear advantage over old fashioned premise based business phone systems. This advantage comes from the fact that VOIP business systems are generally located somewhere on the internet, and thus can communicate with all other internet attached systems.

What this means in practice is that phone extensions for your business can be located anywhere on the planet (where there is an internet connection). Businesses generally rely on good relations with four groups of individuals, customers, vendors, employees, and investors. Smart well managed businesses try to maximize the strength of the relationship with each of these groups.

VOIP phone systems, internet connected, allow a business to provide low cost phone service to individuals in all of these groups. For example, you could provide extensions for all of your important vendors, which would allow them to call you simply by dialing your extension, and pay nothing for the call.Employees can be given business extensions, and may be allowed to make long distance calls on the company nickel. It also means they can be reached any time they are needed, no matter where they might be. So key executives on a major new project may be reached while on the road, or at home.

Investor relations can be improved by giving investors, directors, and board members their own phone extensions, which can be used to make business related calls anywhere in the world, and have them automatically billed to the company. It also allows members of this group to contact executives of the business with ideas, concerns, competitive intelligence, all of the things a growing vibrant business needs to know every day.

In a nutshell, Business VOIP systems allow you to expand the reach and functionality of your business phone system to encompass important members of the business team, no matter where in the world they may be. Adding important team members to your phone system may improve relationships with all key groups.

It seems like you cannot turn around today with finding someone pitching “VOIP phone service” to you. You see it on TV, and even your cable bill and credit card statements have VOIP ads included in them. Why is everyone so excited about VOIP phone service and why is everyone pushing it?The answer to the question is that everyone is pushing it because it is so much in demand. People are switching to VOIP phone service faster than ever before, and the activations of new VOIP service continue to exceed the activations of new traditional telephone service, even for businesses. So like anything else that is in high demand, VOIP phone service is exactly the same.

But with all the offerings, how do you know which one offers the best service and also offers quality service? The straight answer is that you don’t know. As far as quality service, most of them are pretty much the same but the one facet they all share is that your VOIP phone service will use your high-speed Internet connection to make and receive the phone calls on your VOIP phone. And for many people, their high-speed Internet connection is the long pole in the tent.

If your high-speed Internet connection is not fast or rock solid, you are not going to be happy with any VOIP phone service you get. The problem is not with the VOIP service at any price, not the highest priced ones or the lowest priced ones. The gating factor is your high-speed Internet connection, because if that is not rock solid and reliable, there is not a VOIP service anywhere on the planet that you would consider good.If the only option you have for a high-speed Internet connection is satellite, don’t even think about VOIP phone service. A satellite connection, even at the higher ends of the available service plans, is just not going to cut it for good VOIP service.

Also be aware that if your high-speed Internet service goes down, your ability to make or receive phone calls goes away. That’s why you need a reliable Internet connection.Assuming you have a good reliable high-speed Internet connection, then you may want to consider VOIP phone service. Do you get more value from those offerings you see from your cable company that they include in their invoice, compared to some of the offerings you see elsewhere for half the price? In a word, no. The top VOIP providers all offer packages that are pretty typical, such as unlimited long distance in the continental US, caller ID, call waiting, call blocking, and voice mail.Some providers also can provide, for a minor additional cost, something called a “virtual phone number”. Say you live in New York but you talk frequently with your sister who lives in Denver. You can get a Denver “virtual number” so that your sister can call a LOCAL Denver number to reach you, but when she calls that number, your VOIP phone at your home in New York will ring, so it’s a local call for her.VOIP phone service has quality that is equivalent to today’s traditional phones. If you are unsure, some VOIP providers have a one month trial so you can try it out before you make any kind of long term commitment.