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How VoIP Technology Works

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DLS Hosted PBX 5.0 Release announcement

Today I am pleased to announce the launch of the 5th major release of the DLS Hosted PBX. This release includes a number of significant enhancements to Queues, Faxing, Conferencing, Voicemail, Reporting, Call Routing, Predictive Dialer, and Interface Configuration. This release also includes some new features: LDAP Authentication, Multi-Tenant Support, and provisioning for Cisco 7945 handset and Bria softphone.

Does BYOD Demand Special PBX Accommodations ?

PBX user portal for AndroidBYOD is a reality, and, by all estimates, it will continue to grow in adoption over the next couple of years, regardless of whether your company officially implements it as a policy or not. Current estimates place BYOD adoption at 60% within the workplace, and projections state BYOD may receive 90% adoption by 2014 alone.

With numbers these big being tossed around, many experts are beginning to argue that BYOD needs to not only be taken seriously- it needs to reshape the way we think about out UC solutions entirely.

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The VoIP Market’s Gotten a Lot Tougher for the Little Guy (Pt 2)

In many ways, VoIP regulations and taxes favor larger corporations, in both financial and structural ways.

The Price Competition Factor- Who Pays the Bill?

As VoIP services find themselves increasingly taxed at the State and Federal level, there’s a big question of who, exactly, will pay for these taxes, and how these tax increases will affect competition between large providers and small providers.

Generally speaking, large providers almost always have a price advantage over small providers. That isn’t to say large providers offer a greater value than small providers, but it is to say their economies of scale almost always ensure they can sell their services for less than their smaller competition.

This gives larger providers a distinct market advantage over smaller providers as taxes on VoIP increase. Larger providers are going to be better able to pass these taxes directly on to their customers instead of paying them out of pocket. Often they’ll be able to do so while still offering cheaper services than smaller providers.

Smaller providers face a bigger question as taxes rise- should they make their customers pay these taxes, raising their rates? Or should they pay these taxes themselves, sacrificing some of their already slim margins in order to continue to serve their customers at the same price point those customers are accustomed to?

Once again- let’s reiterate that we aren’t talking about value here, that we’re only talking about price. When it comes to price, larger providers almost always have leverage over smaller providers, which means these increased tax burdens have hurt smaller providers far more than their larger competition.

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The VoIP Market’s Gotten a Lot Tougher for the Little Guy (Pt 1)

The government has never really known what to do with VoIP.

Rules and Regulations

On the one hand, VoIP is a telephony service, and as such some people argue it should be regulated and taxed in the same vein as other telephony services (such as traditional PTSN networks).

On the other hand, VoIP is an online service, a platform that isn’t so different from any other online application you might utilize, and one that should be open to new, small service providers. Seen from this angle, the notion of taxing and regulating VoIP has been a thorny issue, to say the least.

Over the years, as VoIP has increased and improved the services it’s offered and gradually transformed further and further into a full-service telephony platform, VoIP has seen increasing regulatory and tax burdens placed upon it. These burdens have dramatically changed the VoIP landscape- especially for small VoIP providers and organizations looking to become VoIP providers.

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Is Telephony Dying? Depends on How You Look at It (Pt 2)

The reasons behind the drop in the telephony market are made clear in a statement tucked away in Infonetics’ report, which says:

“In the first quarter of 2013, enterprise PBX spending dropped to its lowest point since mid-2009. The big squeeze is coming from hyper-competitive price pressure all over, with average revenue per line down across the board. But conservative spending by businesses is exacerbating the problem in some regions, while demand is actually flat-to-up in North America and Asia, reflecting uneven economic recoveries.”

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Is Telephony Dying? Depends on How You Look at It (Pt 1)

We hear it all the time- telephony is dead or, at the least, dying. Not long for the world. On its way out. It’s a story that people like to tell, but like most stories there isn’t much truth to it, and the truth that lies in this statement has been heavily distorted, misrepresented, and viewed through the wrong lens.

The most recent news of telephony’s untimely demise comes from a report released by Infonetics, which found that the telephony market took a skydive in the first quarter of 2013. But is that what really happened, or are there more factors at play here than Infonetics took into account? Could the telephony market actually be growing at a rapid rate, even if this one set of data makes it look like it’s plummeting into obscurity?

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Gartner Predicts BYOD Boom by 2018

In a recent report, research organization Gartner predicted that 70% of professionals will conduct their work on personal smart devices by 2018. To translate- Gartner effectively predicted that 70% of employees will be working on their own smartphones or tablets by 2018, a concept generally referred to as BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device.

If BYOD plays out as Gartner predicts than this will be a huge change in the workplace, and one that requires some extensive planning to implement properly, with minimal friction.

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Bandwidth Demand Spikes – Are You Ready?

VoIP bandwidthWe’ve mentioned a few times on this blog that you need to make sure you adopt the Unified Communications solution that meets your organization’s needs- and part of that preparedness means making sure you provision the bandwidth your organization will require to run its telecommunication systems effectively. If your existing bandwidth supply doesn’t provide the connection speeds and reliability required to handle your organization’s existing needs, then it’s not going to cut it when you upgrade to a VoIP communications network.

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