Telephones are a large part of any business venture. Communication between a business and it’s customers / clients is vital for success. With that said, though, phone lines can soon become incredibly expensive if you are getting a lot of use out of it and especially so if you were to be making international calls. VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phones are a much more cost effective solution to traditional phone lines.
The primary difference between a VOIP phone and a traditional phone is that rather than using a dedicated phone line (ISDN), a VOIP phone will connect calls over the internet. Because of this it allows you to do much more, such as having access to multiple numbers and multiple people on the phone at the same time, without the need for multiple phone lines. This can be beneficial as you can advertise local numbers for different areas, despite being located somewhere else. For example you could have a Portsmouth (02392) number while being based in Southampton (02380). In fact, as long as there is an internet connection available, you can pick up your VOIP phone and answer calls from anywhere in the world!
Further benefits to using VOIP include:
- Allowing a call to ring out to a different phone if the initial call isn’t answered
- Lower costs on calls (up to a 78% reduction in costs compared to old ISDN phone systems)
- Easy management of call groups when someone rings your number
- Faster installation as you no longer need to wait for an engineer to install physical phone lines
- No need for dedicated phone lines for multiple incoming and outgoing calls
- Many advanced features such as integration with CRM systems or analytics to view detailed reports on all incoming and outgoing calls
With BT announcing the phase out of PSTN/ISDN (old school phone systems) with a complete switch off in 2025 (and no new orders being allowed as of 2020), now is the best time to start looking at an alternative solution to future proof your business.
If you would like more information regarding VOIP solutions, or would like to know what VOIP solutions Affordable IT can offer you, then contact us on 02380 000 770, or email it@aff-it.co.uk