Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology is making major inroads with businesses and individuals alike. While there are significant gains and major advantages for VoIP, there are still some things that only the public switched telephone network (PSTN) can offer that are hard to turn away from. But with a VoIP gateway, VoIP suddenly becomes a lot more available without having to completely overthrow the legacy system.
The VoIP gateway, essentially, allows both technologies to operate at the same time. VoIP gateways can take a call staged from a traditional telephone line and convert them to a VoIP or SIP call, or they can put a phone system running on traditional line technology on an IP network. This flexibility allows even those who are concerned about making the move to VoIP to get a full taste of what's in store while still allowing the current PSTN to remain in place and operational.
Even with the ability to keep both technologies operating at the same time, there is still something of a challenge in terms of selecting the right gateway for the job. The primary consideration in selecting the appropriate gateway is considering just what job needs to be done. There are two primary types of VoIP gateways in general: analog units, which can connect regular analog phone lines, and digital units, which allow for multiple digital line connections.
Once it's determined just what purpose the gateway will serve, from there, it's comparatively easy to select the kind of gateway necessary and then narrow down the choices further based on standard metrics like price from any of a variety of different possible vendors.
Making the move to VoIP is a smart move that's well worth making. The savings alone on long distance and international calling isn't hard to pass up, and when the various features that VoIP calling can offer also come into play, that's no small extra use for the company putting in VoIP. But VoIP has some issues, especially related to 911 usage--although that's rapidly changing thanks to E911--and there are of course costs associated with making the change, costs some businesses don't want to, or simply can't, incur. Bringing in a VoIP gateway can certainly help, and showing the ultimate value of VoIP, even on a small scale, is likely to help change some minds and bring about more rapid change, resulting in a terrific potential for savings and improvements in general.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey