VoIP for your Business: The VoIP PBX

I am sure with all it’s recent media attention by now you have heard of Voice over IP (VoIP). For the home and home office providers such a Vonage provide unlimited long distance calling for a fraction of the cost more traditional long distance service and local service. The problem however, like traditional home phone lines, the service is limited to a small amount of lines and a single receiver. Also likewise to a traditional phone system the answer to the problems with using a consumer service provider for your business is a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) designed for VoIP. This article will focus on leveraging the VoIP PBX and the growing VoIP industry to save money on your telephone bills and keep productivity up through the added features inherent to the technology.

To see the strengths that VoIP based PBXs we must first compare it to a traditional phone system. In a traditional PBX based phone system, one like your business is likely to currently have; the incoming and outgoing lines come from a single source from your local Telco. Each phone is wired directly to the PBX unit using independent wiring and special phone hardware. Often phone hardware is bundled with or tailored to traditional PBX hindering your business’s ability to find special purpose phones that fill a particular need or finding such hardware is excessively expensive. Due to requiring all of the phones be directly connected into the PBX, adding new phones to one is often a messy procedure, requiring running new line per phone. Furthermore PBX models being analog in nature also place limits on the amount of phones and connections that may end up being a pricey hidden expense when expanding. Similarly most traditional PBX systems make it impractical to use lines from multiple vendors ending in a higher cost. A traditional PBX excels in a very static and uniform environment when only the simplest of features are needed, once greater flexibility is required the framework often becomes a hindrance rather then the tool it should be.

The Better Way

With all these hindrances and headaches that traditional PBXs offer it is no wonder that VoIP based PBXs are becoming so popular. At it’s core a VoIP PBX, is quite simple, a standard PC set up with special software that manages the phone lines and handles the encoding and decoding of telephone calls.<object id="89" size="medium" align="right" /> This simplicity behind the idea offers the solutions greatest flexibility, a digital call originating on the internet is no different then one that is converted from a traditional phone line by an interface card or audio recorded and played back by computer software. There are several areas that this greater flexibility will help your business save costs and increase productivity.

Portability

With all kinds of new technology available to make a traveling employee as productive on the road as that employee is in the office there was one thing missing, the office telephone. While cell phones, voicemail services and forwarding offer some of the connivances of a office phone, there leaves much to be desired. In much the same way you may now check your email on the road VoIP allows a traveler the ability to connect, via the internet, their software, desktop or wireless phone anywhere in the world and have act as though it never left the office, all without the caller knowing. Making this portability even easier is the development by cell phone manufactures of dual mode phones allowing VoIP use when internet access is available and traditional cell phone services when not. Because the internet is far cheaper, and often free, calls made over it are far less expensive then using forwarding services or receiving calls on a roaming cell phone.

Scalability

<object id="93" size="small" align="left" />As I talked about earlier in the POTS PBX section, traditional PBX solutions often lock your company into fixed number of lines and make it expensive and time consuming to add new phones. VoIP on the other hand uses a routed Ethernet network, the same network that is likely connecting your computer systems. Being routed small routers units can be added at negligible cost to a single port and expand it to allow more phones (or computers) to be attached. Many phones even include 2 Ethernet jacks to accommodate a computer and a phone on a single port negating the need for a router for offices with a computer network. 802.11 wireless networks do away with wires all together and allow phones to work, like a cordless phone with all the features of an office phone and being on a routed network, several of the phones can work on the same wireless access point without inference. Adding new phones to a VoIP PBX is often as easy as clicking a few buttons, something accessible even to novice users.

Consolation multiple locations

Businesses that require locations in many cities are often at a severe disadvantage to their single location counterparts. Phone calls between offices are often very frequent and virtually never local calls, even with the best of calling plans this can become expensive quite fast. Furthermore even without factoring cost, precious lines are used up when making conference calls across multiple locations that may end in customers reaching the dreaded busy signal. VoIP PBXs solve this problem by allowing them to be interconnected allowing traffic between the systems to be sent over the internet rather then over scarce telephone lines. With the interconnected PBXs all extensions across the business (rather then just the location) can be accessed though all phone numbers removing confusion and time by your customers when an employee were to change locations.

Flexibility

The VoIP based solutions offer two distinct flexibility advantages over traditional POTS based solutions, being internet accessible and being computer based. Being internet in addition to the points above opens up the ability to get phone numbers (including international ones) local to locations where your physical offices don’t exist,

a convince to clients at very little cost. Being computer based opens up a lot more flexibility options that allow your business to do things that are just not possible with traditional based PBX systems. Custom written applications and scripts can interact with callers allow them to access things as simple the weather played from reports available on the internet to complex support ticketing systems. Other phone based technology like such as Fax can also benefit from VoIP PBXs allowing personal fax to email gateways for employees.

Lower Costs

Using VoIP based PBXs will give you company access to internet based telephone providers which offer unlimited calling flat rate calling plans and drastically cheaper long distance rates to the competition offered by Telcos. The services provided by internet based service providers continue to grow and prices continue to fall. Currently they offer hundreds of local numbers across North America and Europe, 1-800 access and long distance services, all at rates drastically cheaper, if the service is even available, then local Telcos.

With all these possibilities, features and cheaper prices virtually all companies will see an immediate benefit to VoIP in their business. If you are interested in seeing how VoIP can help your business please contact us for a free consultation.