VOIP - a quick guide

What is VOIP?

VOIP stands for Voice over IP. VOIP technology allows a business or a home user to make and receive calls using a broadband connection. Voice calls can be made to a VOIP user, a mobile, a land line anywhere in the world, like a normal phone.

What are the benefits of VOIP?

The main reason driving many businesses to using VOIP is COST.

As a rough estimate, most businesses stand to reduce their monthly line rental by 30 to 60 percent with VOIP.

If you are a business that will only ever require 1 phone line, then VOIP does not reduce your monthly line rental. But it brings other advantages too, which are reduced international call charges and very competitive national rate calls. Calls abroad typically cost 1 or 2 pence/minute.

How do i get VOIP for my business?

T series phone systems are all VOIP ready. Once installed, your business is VOIP enabled without you even being aware it is installed. You can still have your existing main line number, or choose a new geographical 0207, 0208 or 0845/0870 number etc. Depending on the speed of your broadband connection, your office can accept many incoming calls and make multiple calls through the same mainline number.

Sounds great, what's the catch?

Currently VOIP is not 100% reliable. There are 2 reasons for this, VOIP service providers are still new and ADSL/SDSL services cannot provide you with the reliability of a normal phone line.

But this should put you off VOIP. The cost savings possible are very worth while, and T series phone systems operate both with VOIP and ISDN - when your VOIP fails, ISDN takes over so you and your customers can stay in contact.