Business Telephone Systems Turn To VoIP with Increasing Frequency

The telephone is easily one of the most important business tools of the last century or so, but like many other technological advances, it's lost some ground to the Internet. While many businesses still turn to the basic handset and landline combination, there are a steadily-growing number of firms out there—not to mention individuals—who are turning away from landlines and turning to the Internet in the form of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service to take some of the sting out of the monthly bills that are so often associated with phone service. Long distance, international calling, and extra functions don't often come cheap, but with VoIP service, many such features can be had, and at lower costs than the land-based equivalent.

While in the past, many businesses turned to a private branch exchange (PBX (News - Alert)) system to keep a fully-featured phone system up and running, the associated costs in both time and resources left businesses with some serious headaches associated with the idea. The monthly fees that were associated with said systems were bad enough, but throw in the per-minute rates that followed, as well as the time and resources needed to invest in maintenance and tech support issues to both keep things from going wrong and fix what did go wrong, and the idea of a PBX just wasn't in reach for many businesses. Those that could even afford it felt the drain on profits the system generated.

But the growth of VoIP, meanwhile, opened up a variety of new possibilities for businesses, and allowed businesses access to complete phone systems with a variety of different systems available for comparatively inexpensive monthly subscription fees. There were groups offering different levels of service at different prices, and many offered plenty of extra features even with the lowest-tier services, so finding a VoIP provider became an issue of picking from a broad field of competitors to find the deal that best matched the company's needs.

Though for some time, issues of bandwidth prevented VoIP from really catching on to the extent that it could, improvements to network infrastructure—perhaps exemplified in the standard that is Google Fiber—allowed more and more businesses and individuals alike to take advantage of this new platform. With it came a host of new and valuable options for businesses.

Call routing became ultra-efficient, as a VoIP connection only sends data when there is data to be sent. An analog connection, meanwhile, takes up the entirety of the connection all the time, even when both parties are silent. This allowed VoIP to make better use of available bandwidth, and drop phone bills as well thanks to conservation principles. Local and long-distance calling often got benefits as well, since geography becomes much less of a concern in the immediate region, even parts of the same country, when using an Internet connection to make the calls. International calling got a similar benefit, though not quite as pronounced, so international calling rates didn't drop to nothing like local and long-distance often did, but rather saw a huge cut over more traditional rates.

Then the issue of features got involved. Since adding features like caller ID, voicemail service, conferencing services and more was often just a matter of software in VoIP service, many providers considered it added value, and a way to draw in more users. Finally, there was also the issue of hardware to keep on hand; VoIP service requires much less in the way of hardware than traditional phone services and in many cases can be had as a service, making the total hardware footprint very small and available to more businesses.

This leaves only two points left for a business to determine before bringing in a VoIP service. There are the matters of bandwidth, which need to be examined carefully before bringing in a VoIP system, as not having enough bandwidth to meet needs will end up with sub-par service all the way around, and then just which provider to go with in the end.

This is where a service like TheDigest.com can come in handy, as it contains an easy visual comparison matrix that shows off not only what businesses are available in the field, but what the businesses offer, what said businesses charge per month, what setup fees are available—if any at all—and how the overall service is reviewed by its current users, complete with the total number of reviews. This allows for an easy way to do side-by-side comparisons of what services are offering and how much said services are asking, making for an excellent starting point in figuring out just which company is the best fit for a company's VoIP needs.

VoIP is rapidly making gains with businesses and individuals all over thanks to a greatly increased functionality and a vastly lowered cost, among other critical points. While it may be a challenge to find the right provider, as well as to find the right kind of bandwidth to make such a service possible, looking into such a service will likely pay dividends in the long run in terms of improved service, improved ability to respond to issues, and even improvements to the bottom line. That makes VoIP a service well worth considering.