“IP communications” is a broad term that refers to sending various types of multimedia messages—including voice and video—over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Voice over IP, or VoIP, is a subset of this broader category.

 

Sometimes also referred to as “Internet telephony,” VoIP is the voice segment of IP communications. Yet it’s important to point out that not all VoIP offers the same voice quality. The reason for this is which IP networks are used: private ones maintained and run by a telecommunications company, or the broader, public Internet.

 

For today’s VoIP service providers and their customers, this is a crucial distinction. Service providers want to deliver cost-effective VoIP; customers want voice service that works as well as traditional telephony. These two goals need not be mutually exclusive, yet they sometimes are—and this happens in many cases where the public Internet is used rather than a private IP network.

 

Many businesses have been hesitant to adopt VoIP out of concerns about service quality and security. When the public Internet is used, these concerns can be very valid ones. One company that’s addressing the concerns of customers and service providers alike is Smoothstone, which offers IP communications solutions delivered over a converged, high-speed, nationwide, private IP network.

 

 

The reason Smoothstone invested in its own IP network is that, by doing so, it can offer a level of quality and reliability that today’s businesses demand, yet at the same time harness the cost savings and other advantages of IP communications.

 

Smoothstone takes the stance that VoIP and other IP communications services utilizing the public Internet simply aren’t ready for prime-time yet—especially for the business sector. That’s why it developed its portfolio of “hard as stone” solutions to meet the needs, specifically, of enterprises.

 

The company differentiates its offerings using three straightforward labels:

Just as important as those differentiators, Smoothstone’s portfolio of solutions was designed to make smooth the transition from legacy and multi-vendor phone systems to IP communications. A key part of this achievement is offering a solution with a relatively low total cost of ownership (TCO).

 

How does Smoothstone deliver low TCO? Savings come from three main sources:

To learn more about Smoothstone’s IP communications solutions, please visit the company’s TMCnet.com channel, VoIP Service Providers.