Hosted PBX

Ways to Establish Hosted PBX Providers Credibility

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Have you ever heard of the old “bring the puppy home” sales trick? If not, here’s how it goes.

Say you’re cruising around with your family and you stop in a pet shop. You think you might want to get a dog for you and your kids at some point, but you’re not quite sure just yet. You look around and spot a cute little puppy that you all adore. You love the pup, your kids love the pup, all is right with the world.

Except, of course, you’re not totally sure you even want a dog in the first place. The pet store manager knows this. The manager also knows a sales trick or two, so they make you a seemingly fair offer. Bring the puppy home with you, and if you don’t want to keep the little romper, you can bring him back tomorrow.

So you take the cute little puppy home with you and lo-and-behold when tomorrow rolls around you can’t bring yourself to return the little guy… even if you remain just as unsure about your future life as a pet owner as you felt the moment you walked into the store.

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Questions to Ask Hosted PBX Service Provider References

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Signing up for a new VoIP Hosted PBX service is a big deal, and a decision you don’t want to make lightly. While it’s tempting to simply go with the cheapest VoIP service you can find, the best way to learn whether a hosted PBX provider is really worth hiring is to ask for references. Once you compile a list of references, you need to grill the hell out of the poor souls you call up looking for information.

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Budget PBX – Yes, It’s Possible!

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Why haven’t you moved your company to the hosted PBX yet?

What do you mean “you’ve only had your current phone system for five years”? Did you keep your cell phone for five years?

Maybe you think that VoIP technology doesn’t move as fast? It does. Well, with the hosted PBX the cool thing is that in most cases, all you need to do to stay current is buy some new handsets! The rest of it practically upgrades itself assuming your service provider wants to keep your business over time.

Easy or not, it’s not uncommon for many companies to not touch their office phone systems for nearly a decade. The problem with this approach is that business technologies evolve and you have to evolve with them or you run a real risk of relying on some antiquated business practices which your clients will sooner or later notice.

Today, if your PBX handset is more than three years old, it may be time to upgrade it to something a bit more recent.

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VoIP Beta Testing Blues

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Points of View

I’d bet you love Beta testing new calling features for your favorite hosted pbx service provider.

No?

I want YOU for some VoIP BETA testing

What am I thinking! Of course – who in their right mind would Beta test a phone service? After all, telephones are the veins of your business, a vital part of its organism. And how would you report a problem if your phone service goes down?

So when your VoIP service provider asked if you would be interested in becoming an important part of their field beta testing program for a brand new set of features in a new release of a product that can still be littered with bugs you firmly said “No, thanks”.

You are not eager to jump on an opportunity to provide that important input, make user interface more friendly, participate in development and even sneak in a feature request that your business will benefit from the most!?. Your business is too good to be running some untested Beta software?

Well, maybe another customer is willing… No? Anyone? Someone?

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Guide to Calculating TCO of Your Phone System

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Understanding Total Cost of Ownership of a PBX System

Cost is a major factor that drives virtually every decision a business owner makes. Not only is it important to look at the up-front costs of something, the total cost of ownership comes into play, too. For some companies, it might be worthwhile to lay out more capital in the short-term, if it parlays into long-term savings. For others, they might not use a product or service long enough to justify the initial set up costs. This is true of a hosted phone system, just like it is for anything else.

Hosted PBX 4.0 moves to Beta

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Release notes for DLS Hosted PBX  4.0a ( beta ) Feature Enhancements: Inbound call security enhancements. Switch Music on Hold format to wave for native playback. Attempt to convert uploaded Music on Hold and recordings to the correct format. Background images for Polycom 450, 550, 560, 650 , 670, and VVX1500 handsets. Supplied a link … Read more

The Surprise Selling Point for Hosted PBX Solutions

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If you asked us a couple years ago why our customers ultimately decide to purchase hosted PBX solutions we would have offered you the common-sense answers you expected to hear. We would have explained that our hosted PBX systems offered increased flexibility and control over traditional systems. We would have explained how our hosted PBX solutions could scale up and down, meeting our clients ever-changing needs with just a moment’s notice. We would have explained how our telephony solutions provided the ability to tie multiple locations to a single Hosted PBX solution, regardless of how remotely they were located.

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Information or Telecommunications? How Regulation Affects Hosted PBX and Law Enforcement

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Communications is a tightly controlled industry in the U.S. With new hosted PBX technologies, some issues have cropped up that caused the FCC to run into a snag when it comes to properly regulating them. Some of these might seem like simple semantics, but even something as minor as figuring out what to call a hosted PBX service can snowball into something more serious.

Look at it this way- there are separate regulations for information services and telecommunications services. Information services, like the internet, are not as tightly regulated as telecommunications services, like telephone services. So… how should regulators qualify Voice-over-IP systems? They’re essentially a telecommunications service, but one that relies on the internet. Do calls made over the internet qualify as phone calls, or as internet data content? Calling them an “internet content” would make internet-based phone services subject to far fewer regulations than traditional phone services. Needless to say, VoIP service providers are pushing for an information services classification, while traditional phone companies are lobbying for a telecommunications services classification.

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Hosted PBX Unwrapped: VoIP Features Your Business Cannot Do Without

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ConferenceIf after careful research and deliberation your business has made the decision to upgrade to a hosted VoIP service, you are probably anxious to choose a Hosted PBX service provider and start reaping the many benefits of a hosted phone system. The first question on your mind is probably “What features does the business need?” VoIP Features such as voicemail, call waiting, and E911 are standard across providers of hosted VoIP. The advanced feature sets, however, can vary quite a bit in both: availability and implementation. When you select a service provider, you ultimately choose a set of features. In your search for a VoIP service provider, consider the following advanced features that go beyond the basics and provide your business increased flexibility and efficiency.

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VoIP Bandwidth: Quality vs. Quantity

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Digital leased lines are no longer the favorites of bandwidth-hungry businesses. As many alternative sources of affordable Internet bandwidth became available, dedicated point-to-point leased lines begun to fall out of favor with many small businesses. Their relatively high cost, by today’s standards, per megabit of bandwidth make them unattractive in comparison to the generous shared bandwidth offers from various telecommunications and cable carriers. That said, it seems like rumors of their rapid demise are being greatly exaggerated. T-1 lines, for example, seem to be entering their 7th life as market for them is getting sudden support by those who had to deal with at least one DSL or Cable outage.

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