Business Voip Services- helpful information
Voip is well on the way to replacing traditional telephone system with call costs from as little as 10 cents between cities and 1 cent per minute to anywhere in Australia, businesses are racing to take advantage of VoIP.
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is essentially a technology that allows you to connect your normal business phone or phone system into an adaptor box that connects to your broadband internet connection. From the callers or receives experience there is no difference then using a traditional phone system, except the voice is now being transmitted via your broadband connection.
Because Voip is a digital service it also offers many other features not available with traditional phone systems. Primarily it provides the foundation for unified communications, such as the integration of e-mail, fax, video conferencing and more.
While the initial drive toward Voip services may have been to reduce call costs, it is now recognised broadly as a strategic long-term investment to facilitate business efficiencies and competitive advantage.
Business Voip Benefits
The benefits to business resulting from a Voip solution can include:
- the opportunity for business with multiple premises to eliminate call costs between offices or stores. Voip offers businesses the opportunity to create virtual PABX’s where calls can be transferred between offices at no cost.
- with Voip the extension is tied to the person instead of the telephone, so network-connected staff members can be contacted using a single number no matter where they are located.
- increased mobility with a VPN, providing staff with the ability to work from home or remote offices while retaining network data and telephony access
- the ability to integrate Voip and CRM systems for immediate display of a customer’s record on inbound and outbound calls
- reduced network administrative costs, with a single network used for data and voice elimination of line rental based on a per leased line basis
Voip Technical Issues to discuss with your Voip provider
It is important to remember that there are many technical factors to take into consideration when planning a move to a Voip system, such as Quality of Service (QoS), installation logistics, cabling/power, equipment selection and more. It is important to discuss your needs with a specialist provider.
According to a Cisco Whitepaper the key issues that Voip traffic is sensitive to are;
- Latency- is the average travel time it takes for a packet to reach its destination. If there is too much traffic on the line, or if a voice packet gets stuck behind a large data packet (such as an email attachment), the voice packet will be delayed to the point that the quality of the call is compromised.
- Jitter- In order for voice to be intelligible, consecutive voice packets must arrive at regular intervals. Jitter describes the degree of variability in packet arrivals, which can be caused by bursts of data traffic or just too much traffic on the line.
- Packet loss- Packet loss is a common occurrence in data networks, but computers and applications are designed to simply request a retransmission of lost packets. Dropped voice packets, on the other hand, are discarded, not retransmitted. Quality of Service
Quality of Service (QoS) Tools
Can help address these issues and minimise their impact. Two of the most common available tools include;
- Traffic Prioritisation- the key purpose of traffic prioritization is to ensure latency sensitive applications such as Voip are not negatively impacted.
- Traffic Shaping – manages bandwidth to ensure enough is available for Voip traffic.
IT Directory- use our directory to find your local Business Voip providers who can discuss your specific needs. Covering Australia wide- Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Darwin.