VoIP Service Providers

If you’re paying for a landline that gets plugged into a wall, chances are you’re wasting money on outdated technology that should be in a museum. According to the latest industry data, it’s common for small businesses and households to be paying far too much for their telecommunications.

Email turned letters into digital files sent over the Internet. VoIP does the same with your voice—converting it to data sent over your Wi‑Fi instead of copper phone lines. With cloud-based phone systems, the “brain” of the system is online, not in your office, so you can answer business calls from any location with an Internet connection and a compatible device, just as if you were at your desk.

To get the most value from VoIP, you only need three things: high-speed Internet, a smart device that can make and receive Internet calls, and a service plan that fits your business. Switching to VoIP typically cuts telecommunications costs by 30% to 50%, before you even factor in the added features and flexibility.

Stop Paying for 19th Century Copper: How Internet Telephony Works

If you are currently using a traditional landline, then your voice is being carried over 100-year-old copper wires. Modern phone systems, known as Internet Telephony or VoIP, use your existing internet connection to make and receive calls. By understanding how internet telephony works, you can find the right service to meet your needs and keep your costs down.

Internet telephony sends your voice as digital packets over the internet. These packets travel very quickly over your Wi-Fi connection and are received by the recipient’s phone or computer almost instantly.

The “Virtual Brain” of Your Office: Essential Features for a Professional Image

Virtual receptionist and auto-attendant solutions allow you to have a professional voice menu set up in a matter of minutes to route calls for you. Press 1 for sales, press 2 for service, etc. While having staff on hand to answer and direct calls is ideal, having a solution that can handle the calls when you’re busy is also key.

Upgrading your business lines can also unlock a number of powerful unified communications solutions that bundle together calls, texts, and video meetings. Unified communications as a service (UCaaS) enables you to have all of your communications tools in one place and makes for a beautiful, streamlined solution to manage your communications on a daily basis.

And by connecting your digital hub to your client records, you can also unlock solutions that enable you to automatically sync your phone logs with your customer list in your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool. This allows you to have the file for the caller pop up on your screen as you answer the call, saving you time from having to manually log the call and update the customer’s file at the end of the day.

To choose the right solution, it helps to be clear on the features and what your business really needs.

Five must-have VoIP features for small businesses:

• Customizable auto-attendants
• Mobile app access
• Voicemail-to-email transcription
• Automated CRM syncing
• Built-in text messaging

By having a clear feature set, you can focus on finding a reliable regional provider to support your solution, especially in large local markets.

Everything You Need to Get Started: From Wi-Fi Access Points to Simple Softphone Apps

Saving you hundreds of dollars in new hardware by using the devices you already have. Most people know that you can use a softphone on their computer or smart device but don’t know what the minimum hardware required is to run a VoIP phone system from your office. Here are the 4 basics:

• A data connection from your existing Wi-Fi router.
• An online speed test to confirm that your internet is able to handle 5+ calls simultaneously.
• A smart device or computer with a working microphone.
• A basic quality headset to block out background noise from other things going on in the room.

Porting your existing contact number to your new VoIP phone system is a relatively painless process. You can transfer a bank account, so why not your phone number.

Three Simple Steps to Move Your Current Phone Number to VoIP:

• The provider submits a digital request to port the number.

• The provider then authorizes the port by logging into the provider’s website using their login details and uploading a copy of the account’s old phone bill.

• The provider waits for the port to be actioned by the telco and for it to come through.

Using softphone applications on your smart devices means you can work from anywhere. However, the VoIP signals are transmitted over the internet, so occasional disconnections do occur, and it is up to the provider to mitigate these issues to ensure that communication is maintained.

Jitter: Cause, Fix, and the Importance to Your Data Security on Phone Calls.

It can be infuriating to be talking on a call and, for a few moments, have your voice change to a robot. This is a common problem with VoIP communications and is known as “call jitter”. The causes of call jitter are numerous, but the good news is that for most problems, a simple switch off and on of your WiFi router can sort out a week’s worth of problems.

The main cause of call jitter that is not easily solvable is the use of WiFi. This is because WiFi signals can be easily interfered with by thick walls, and so running an Ethernet cable (the old-style plug-in cable) straight from your router to your computer will solve ninety percent of ongoing audio dropouts.

If you are to compare VoIP services, then it is also wise to check out the quality of service of the provider in terms of the digital padlocks that they use on your network to protect your conversations. When looking for a provider to compare services, look for the use of the standard AES-256 encryption for voice communications. This will ensure that your communications are private and that your business data is safe.

Three Steps to Switching Your Business Phones to VoIP

The modern business needs a VoIP solution. This is the easiest way to convert your voice into data and stop wasting your money on old copper wire systems and their respective telecom charges.

Three action items to kick off your transition to new work systems:

• Check your connection: Use an online speed test to check your bandwidth for use with VoIP.
• Audit your bill: Compare your current telecom charges with leading VoIP providers to find potential savings.
• Choose between a hosted PBX or an on-premise system—most businesses find cloud-hosted options simplest to deploy.

You no longer have to be a slave to a landline, stuck on one particular desk. Modern business communications are digital, and by switching to a system of this nature you can cut your monthly costs to optimize your business’s operational expenses and be able to manage communications from anywhere.