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Voice over Internet Telephony (VoIP)

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What is VoIP?

VoIP is an acronym which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. It is a technology which allows you to conduct telephone conversations over the internet rather than to use dedicated telephone lines. The technology is also known as internet telephony.

You may be asking why you should be interested and why major enterprises and small organisations alike are investing in, and adopting, this technology. This is no longer a wait and see technology; it is being deployed right now. So what is it doing for those organisations who have adopted it?

Benefits

There are three head-and-shoulders benefits that arise from adopting VoIP.

In addition, many adopters of the technology are showing significant cost savings.

 

Flexible Working

The conventional phone is fixed. It's on your desk and if you are not there it is of precious little value. The phone line, the phone number and the telephone itself are locked into a fixed relationship. Each is dependent on the other two.

A VoIP phone does not suffer this limitation; the telephone number, the telephone and the network are all decoupled. You simply log-in to any VoIP-enabled phone connected to the internet and your calls follow you there. You may be familiar with retrieving your e-mails from any computer connected to the internet anywhere in the world; VoIP telephony is similar.

So, when you are away from your office, your phone number goes with you. You could also pack up your bags and move to another location anywhere in your office (or the world) temporarily or permanently, without having to forward your calls.

Assigning telephone numbers to out of hours and designated on-call service staff and managing the calls is easy with VoIP telephony.

 

Enterprise Facilities

Big corporations can afford big PABX's which come with big features. These features include Interactive Voice Response, hunt groups, conference facilities, voice mail and many others. Features like these facilitate the provision of superior customer service, efficient internal processes and staff productivity. But these features tend to be provided with high-end systems which come at a price which is not justifiable for many smaller companies. See our leaflet - Facilities of the Centrex VoIP service

VoIP-based PABXs and hosted VoIP solutions inherently offer these high-end facilities on entry-level products, enabling even the smallest organisation to gain the benefits enjoyed by the big boys. Integration of VoIP-based PABX functionality with your customer systems enables you to enhance your customer service.

 

Application Convergence

The Internet carries many different types of data, or information. Text, pictures, video and audio are commonplace, and the internet treats all these data types the same. They are just packets of data which have to be shipped from one place to another; it's that simple. Our Data Sheet VoIP - How does it all work? describes how this is done. But voice is just data and it can also be broken up into packets and shipped from one place to another. In that respect, all the facilities we have for the other data types can be applied to voice.

We are used to attaching a text document to an email; but why not attach a voice message to an email? Why not store a voice recording in your customer database alongside text documents? After all, it's only data. It is this ability to treat voice as data which now enables us to integrate voice and call management in many applications.

Cost Reduction

The telephone companies get you two ways: they charge you for providing telephone lines and then they charge you again for using them. By and large, outside some restrictive service packages, telephone calls are metered and charges are levied based on distance and duration.

The internet uses a different charging model: you subscribe to the service and usage thereafter is un-metered. Within all practical limits, your usage is unfettered. Surfing the web is not metered and you can download web pages from all over the world without a usage charge. VoIP telephony uses the same charging model; ie you subscribe to the service (that might be a hosted solution or your own PABX), rent broadband lines and that's it. No call charges for the calls which are routed using VoIP. If you have a number of remote offices and each office is VoIP enabled, then all your inter-office calls are free. Of course, there will be times when you need to call a conventional telephone user who is not VoIP-enabled, or a mobile telephone, and there is a charge for these, but even so these charges are generally lower than the equivalent BT tariff for such calls.

Many organsiations are reporting 30% tp 40% savings on call charges when switching to VoIP. Our consultants can work with you to calculate likely call charge savings which would accrue from adopting a VoIP telephone system.

Other Benefits

In addition to the tangible benefits described above, the adoption of internet telephony brings with it other advantages which, though difficult to measure, are important when investing in new technology. They are:

 

Remote Management

Remote Management Remote management is the ability to run diagnostic tests and to detect equipment faults over the network from a remote location - typically a specialist diagnostic centre. No longer is it necessary for a technician to physically visit the site to diagnose a problem with the equipment. The IT industry has been enjoying the benefits of remote management for many years, and with the advent of internet-based telephony, this service is now available for your network-connected PABX and telephones. Remote management often means that a fault can be detected and repair action initiated even before the user becomes aware that there is a problem
 

Industry Standards

Until now, businesses were obliged to choose their telephony solution from a range of proprietary solutions. The internet is one of the most standards-compliant systems in the world; and it is that feature which makes it so accessible. VoIP telephony systems have inherited this standards-based philosophy using existing internet standards where appropriate, and industry open standards for switches and equipment. This gives you supplier choice and a future-proof, open systems solution.

Incremental Take-on

Many organisations are entering the renewal cycle for their telephony equipment and it makes sense to look at a VoIP-enabled system as the replacement. But it is not necessary to change over to an all singing, all dancing exclusively VoIP-enable system from day 1.

You can achieve many of the benefits of internet telephony just by adopting a VoIP-enabled PABX, using the existing phone lines which you already have.

A typical incremental approach might consist of three steps.

Our consultants will work with you to help you determine which is the most appropriate approach to achieve the benefits of internet telephony.