Mobile Device Management Solutions
Managing your Business Communications just got Easier!
We made the very scary choice of moving from our traditional phone system and typical business lines to VoIP in July of 2010. I say "scary" because of the many horror stories we have heard in the past surrounding quality and performance. However, we had two key agendas that had to be met;
Voice over IP technology is a mature technology that in many cases offers significant savings compared to conventional telephony. If you’re already paying for broadband, chances are switching to VoIP is a good idea. We routinely recommend it to clients.
Naturally, this begs the question: “Why bother with traditional telephony at all?” VoIP is useful, but it’s not a telecom panacea. There are still situations where traditional phone service has the edge. For some people, this may take the shine off of VoIP. Let’s walk through them.
No outage protection: If your power’s out, your VoIP phone doesn’t work. If you routinely use a cell phone as well this is probably not such a big deal, but it could become a problem in major emergencies, where wireless networks will slow and fail in response to increased call volume.
911 Problems: IP addresses don’t correspond to fixed gegraphical points in the way traditional phone numbers do. There are a workarounds for this, but they aren’t as reliable as traditional phones. Some regions have dedicated E911 for VoIP customers, but in this case the operator relies on billing information to establish the caller’s location. If your provider has out of date or incorrect information, emergency services may go to the wrong address.
Tied to Internet uptime: When your Internet’s down, your phone stops working. If you suffer frequent downtimes your savings might not justify constant service interruptions.
DoS attack and eavesdropping vulnerabilities: VoIP is vulnerable to packet interception and denial of service attacks in just the same way as standard Internet communications. Mass requests to the phone’s associated IP can shut it down. VoIP is usually not encrypted, so anyone with the requisite expertise can eavesdrop on calls. These vulnerabilities don’t matter to most users, but they’re guaranteed dealbreakers in high-security industries.
Quality issues: VoIP works because it uses the same packet-based protocols as other Internet communications. The drawback is that packet loss will interfere with voice communications. Users may experience a temporary interruption of service whenever the network experiences heavy usage. This parallels the slowdown you might get loading web pages at these times, and it happens for the same reasons. There are also problems sending faxes, but developing protocols may eventually resolve these.
To sum up, if your business has the same needs as a typical household (even if the scale is larger), VoIP might be the cost reduction solution you need. If you have other needs, consider the tradeoffs carefully. You might want to stick with traditional phone service for these reasons:
Note, however, that it’s not always an either/or situation. GILL Technologies can manage multiple services for you to save traditional lines for critical services, and VoIP for everything else. Contact us to find out more.
2. Renegotiate your contracts: If your telecom contract is set for automatic renewal, you might be cheating yourself out of a better deal. Talk to other providers and see if they can beat the price you’re currently paying or can offer more services for the same price.
3. Consider VoIP: You’ve probably heard the buzz around Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). It’s already taking the enterprise world by storm, and adoption among small and mid-size businesses is gradually increasing. VoIP enables you to use your data network — which you already use to access the Internet — to place phone calls. It can be more cost effective than owning your own private branch exchange (PBX), not only because the equipment is cheaper, but also because you can make many of your calls without ever using the public switched telephone network or paying for long distance.
4. Assign appropriate plans for cell phone users: Avoid small business cell phone plans that offer more minutes than your employees actually use. If they need to make more phone calls at certain times of the year – like during trade show season, peak sales visit periods, or other special projects – consider buying more minutes during those times or carrying forward minutes from previous months. That way, you aren’t paying bloated prices year round.
5. Use conferencing instead of traveling: Conference Calling has quickly become a popular system of business-related communications. Company representatives may now promote their product or service and present business proposals to remote clients without need for actual travel and the incident expenses of lodging and utilities. Aside from money, the company’s time is also used more efficiently since scheduling conferences over the phone can be done by just dialing the phone. This can be used in conjunction with Web Conferences as well.
