A recent blog post from the senior VoIP engineer of 2talk, a cloud-based PBX (News - Alert) provider for businesses in New Zealand, discussed the benefits of switching away from legacy copper and into VoIP communications systems.
In Julian Rivers-Smith's post at Techday, the article suggests that there are only two kinds of companies in this world: those that have VoIP communications and those that should have VoIP communications. Of course, even with the “should” part of that statement being subjective, there is a lot of evidence that supports businesses' migrations away from copper and into fiber. They want the reliability of cloud-based systems that can offer all sorts of features -- audio, video, conferencing, email, voicemail -- all in a single package. Furthermore, they want their communication systems to be flexible, so when they grow, they know their ability to conduct conferences will not suddenly cut out.
Daily reports point to these desires as a common theme among businesses wanting more advanced communications. This is certainly the case in New Zealand, Rivers-Smith suggests, even though the country as a whole has not had vast increases in network speeds. Instead of relying on speed, they are taking advantage of bandwidth and availability of services.
“Something that is driving and enabling cloud services is the advancement of access solutions in New Zealand,” Rivers-Smith says. “Although Internet speeds have not vastly improved, our average local bandwidth has dramatically increased. This is great for businesses within New Zealand that are offering cloud-based services where bandwidth would have previously been a hindrance.”
On top of all that, businesses are also migrating to VoIP systems because they find them more cost-effective than copper. Traditional phone lines are often difficult to scale; even when they do scale, they can be prohibitively expensive. VoIP, though, can scale instantly with demand by provisioning cloud-based servers to deliver more bandwidth as needed. Companies pay for what they use and never more than that. Not every plan works that way, but businesses that have peak hours can find such plans beneficial to their operations because they move exactly as such companies move.
TMC (News - Alert)'s Virtual PBX also has suggested that making the switch from copper to a hosted system can be easy and cost-effective. VoIP providers, it says, can offer packages as low as $10 a month that come with all the necessary features that make businesses operate like true professional organizations. Rivers-Smith says that some companies even use ISDN and PSTN gateways to connect their legacy hardware to VoIP systems.
Whether or not they purchase new hardware or try to make do with older tech, VoIP appears to be the way to go -- especially for startups and businesses that experience periods of rapid growth. The benefits appear to be many while the downfalls appear to be few.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson