What VoIP Means to Your Business

VoIP, or Voice over IP, is voice communication transmitted over the internet.  

Traditionally, voice communication was transmitted over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).  That was the network of copper phone lines either hanging overhead or buried underground, connecting all the residential homes and businesses in any given area.

If there never was an internet, voice would still be transmitted over copper lines, but here’s what we’d be missing out on: 

Inexpensive long distance – with the advent of the internet, all long distance phone calling is transmitted over the internet at one point or another.  Since the availability of bandwidth is high, prices have come down.  It’s much more economical for carriers to transmit long distance calls across the internet.  Subsequently, they’ve passed the savings to their customers.

SIP – SIP stands for Session Initiated Protocol.  That’s a fancier way to define Voice over IP.  SIP trunks are voice paths over the internet.  SIP is a great alternative to traditional phone service; it’s more dynamic, economical, provides more functionality, scales better and isn’t laced with all the taxes and surcharges that come with more traditional phone services.

VoIP Functionality – To understand the functionality it is necessary to understand common VoIP terms and acronyms first. Check out our dedicated blog to understand the regularly used VoIP terminologies.

Visual voicemail (voicemails in your email inbox), web portals for line management (change a call hunting sequence, turn Call Forwarding on or off remotely… are just two capabilities), screen pops with customer account info for customer service reps – those are just a few of the capabilities VoIP delivers.

Phone number flexibility – Used to be, if you moved your business down the street, you might have to change your phone number, or at least pay to have the number forwarded to your new number.  Now, you could move your business to another state and still retain your phone number.  Or, if you’re operating out West but your customers are located in the East, by utilizing SIP, it’s possible to make it appear that your customer calls are local calls.

One network to manage – before VoIP, a business was required to maintain two disparate networks – one for voice and another for data.  There were two sets of wires, separate equipment, different providers and technologies.  Now you can achieve one set of cabling, share equipment, acquire your services from the same provider, all managed by one department.

CarrierBid offers every possible VoIP product or service.  We can help your business determine the most appropriate solution, secure the best pricing, through the implementation and provide ongoing customer support.  Contact CarrierBid today.