voip - voice over ip
what is voip?
VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol is a method of sending telephone calls over the Internet instead of using a normal telephone line. If you have broadband connection to the Internet then you are connected to an IP network. You can make & receive VoIP calls to other VoIP users, mobile users or normal landlines. The integration between VoIP & other forms of telephony is complete & indistinguishable to the user.
why use voip?
- To cut your business telephony costs. Calls made to other VoIP phones are free, & calls to other lines are competitively priced.
- Flexibility - you can get a fully-featured hardware/software or virtual PBX system for your business. For example, have one VoIP number & ten extensions, with all the facilities you would expect: voice menu, extensions for specific people, hunt groups, call forwarding, etc.
- Systems can be configured to give whatever impression you want to customers. Geographical codes are no longer a limitation. For example, if you have associates or employees in other areas of the UK or even abroad, you can give them all extensions on the same number, or their own numbers with the same area code as your head office. It is impossible to tell whether you have city centre offices, or a virtual office!
who can benefit from voip?
The main beneficiaries to implementing VoIP are small & medium sized businesses with several employees, especially those with distributed offices & teleworkers. It is also beneficial to individual consultants who find themselves out of the office for most of the time. The ability for that important call to hunt you down can be invaluable.
A fully featured PBX can assign one or more external numbers that people can dial & these can be mapped to a voice menu to give the ability to choose an internal extension, or go directly to an internal extension, hunt group, or diversion to another number. Calls that go unanswered can either be forwarded to another number, or to voicemail.
More & more businesses are enabling the power of VoIP, it really is taking off in a big way. Small & medium sized business will be able to take advantage of a range of telephone facilities allowing the SME to punch well above their fighting weight.
If you are interested in VoIP then please get in touch & we will be happy to discuss this further. Just one more thing - the proof of the pudding is in the eating - we use VoIP here at Root IT Solutions & we wouldn't go back to using a normal phone system. Proof positive!
