Reliable phone service is a lifeline for business, even now when the importance of video conferencing, email and social media is at an all-time high. But traditional telephony can carry significant sunk costs, including line rental and PBX maintenance. More companies are re-examining these costs and making the switch to voice over IP (VoIP) this moves their business phone system to the cloud, using their data connections instead of dedicated phone lines to carry calls. There are many benefits to moving to a VoIP solution for business.
Work from Anywhere
VoIP allows one seamless communications service that lets employees make and receive calls from any number of devices, including laptops, PCs, tablets, and smartphones. VoIP is an affordable, reliable technology that is easily deployed and frees employees to collaborate from anywhere.
Total Cost of Ownership
It’s important to look at your current telephony investment. An ISDN Primary Rate Interface alone can be a significant cost but there are also other costs, including line rental, PBX purchase and maintenance. Many providers allow for different hosted PBX options. For example, where the switchboard functionality resides in the core network rather than in on-site hardware at your premises. This option can provide brilliant cost savings, as you eliminate not just equipment capex costs but also maintenance fees.
The cost of scalability should also be factored into your decision. VoIP services can be scaled quickly and inexpensively whereas it can take time to scale your ISDN.
Benefits Versus the Risk of VoIP
Telephony has been a vital fixture across enterprises for decades. This can sometimes lead to companies being risk-averse when it comes to examining alternatives to their traditional calling solutions. It is important to note that VoIP is a mature technology with the same SLA guarantees that protect other telecom services. If your data connection is protected (a primary data connection backed up by secondary resilience), you now have the same benefits for your voice traffic, providing resilience that you never had before.
Using voice over IP, you’ll also experience less disruption during an upheaval like an office relocation. You only need to move your data lines rather than phone lines and can be up and running with calls as soon as you’re online.
VoIP Options
Magnet Plus has been offering VoIP services for two decades and we continue to invest in our voice capability. The solutions we offer terminate VoIP calls via dedicated interconnects with Tier 1 voice carriers, so we can deliver the strongest possible SLAs for the service. There are a range of PBXs and installation options to choose from, which allow for features such as voicemail, extension dialing, unified communications, instant messaging and presence, plus any integrations needed.
Normally to deliver the VoIP service, a data (Ethernet) connection must be taken from your on-site switch/router to the VoIP interface on your PBX. If your PBX doesn’t have this, then a gateway can be deployed which bridges between the data line and the voice interface of your PBX.
Overall the VoIP solution allows businesses to save costs and scale efficiently. Migrating to the cloud for voice calls is not just a way to remove costs, but also as a means of leveraging a data connection to full effect. In turn getting better value from that bandwidth investment.
If you’d like to find out more about our VoIP for business contact us today.
