Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP ) is the technology that allows voice calls to travel over IP based data networks. VoIP has allowed consumers to use phone services like Skype to make free calls over the Internet.

VOIP Phone Systems

VOIP is becoming increasingly popular among small and mid sized businesses as well. A May 2009 VOIP review report estimated that 35 percent of American small and mid sized businesses have deployed VoIP phone systems to save costs.

A January 2010 VOIP review report suggests that those who have already taken the VOIP for small business route are satisfied with the return on investment. It concluded that: small and mid sized businesses feel comfortable using business VOIP in place of traditional voice services, but often use it strategically to minimize long distance phone charges.

Two types of VOIP phone services have emerged

A consumer VOIP phone service sends voice traffic over the Internet in the same way as data packets are sent. This is often fine for personal chats, but most businesses require something better. The issue with the standard protocol is that sometimes the Internet gets busy, so voice traffic can hit bottlenecks, and it becomes difficult to hear conversations. Also those standard connections are not secure.

To avoid these issues, many businesses opt to send their voice traffic over a private network or a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN is similar to a narrow tunnel through the Internet. It carries only its owner’s traffic so it is very secure, and is less likely to suffer from the sorts of bottlenecks that degrade voice traffic. Many business VOIP service providers offer affordable private network and VPN solutions and conversations conducted over these are generally indistinguishable from those carried over traditional PSTN lines.

VOIP Is More Than Just Inexpensive Calls

Before VOIP service came along, pretty much all companies used time division multiplexing (TDM) private branch exchanges (PBXs) to switch their calls. These were proprietary closed solutions. VOIP, on the other hand, is an open source technology. This means that a VOIP PBX can reside on almost any server and that anyone can build and customize applications for it. All this competition has driven down the cost of added services, so a company that implements business VOIP can also deploy a wide range of VOIP phone services that until recently would have been expensive to all except the large enterprises.

Choosing The Best VoIP Service Provider

As with all technology decision making, the key to success is to analyze your business needs first and then to find the right VOIP Service that can address those needs most cost effectively. When assessing VoIP service providers, it is important to be satisfied with the following:

• Is it a highly reliable service? Phone outages can be disastrous for any business
• Calling rates that work for the small business’ call volume and mix (local/long-distance/international)
• Additional value added services that are important to the small or mid sized business such as voice mail, conferencing and mobility.
• Is it secure.

Tags: VOIP

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