From SIP Handsets to Totally Mobile?
SIP handsets or a Smartphones for your business – what would you choose?
Guide to Calculating TCO of Your Phone 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.
Price Wars Among Business VoIP Service Providers
Price wars result in some providers making service costs less transparent. The more complex the VoIP service provider pricing is, the more difficult it is to compare it to competition. Bundling “free phones” into the price of many of the hosted PBX services makes it even more difficult to distinguish individual price components. Some VoIP service providers even choose to hide their prices from their prospective clients. Instead of making their prices as obvious and transparent as possible, they force their prospective clients to sit through long sales pitches and needlessly complicated explanations of services offered, all in an effort to confuse these prospective clients into paying more than they need to.
The Surprise Selling Point for Hosted PBX Solutions
we realized that our hosted PBX solution’s more exotic features aren’t remotely possibly on normal phone lines and with conventional phone systems. Our customers had never seen these features before, and their novelty signalled to our customers that they were purchasing a hosted PBX solution that was truly, visibly, undeniably superior to their current system.
Information or Telecommunications? How Regulation Affects Hosted PBX and Law Enforcement
One of the growing pains that any innovative new technology goes through inevitably involves government regulation. Leaving PBX systems unregulated might work out well for new companies that want to start up, but it’s not good for their customers. So, to ensure that they are capable of complying with things like emergency services and law enforcement, things like VoIP and hosted PBX need to be appropriately classified, and acted on accordingly.
Hosted PBX Unwrapped: VoIP Features Your Business Cannot Do Without
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.
No more SPIT!
Those annoying, unsolicited messages that clutter your email inbox have an ugly cousin that seeks to bombard your digital phone messaging system with pre-recorded messages and cause much more damage.
VoIP Bandwidth: Quality vs. Quantity
Telecommunications infrastructure growth always lags behind the demand for new telecommunications services. Many exciting data transport options such as fiber optics are making their way into SMB market. The cost of their build-out however is mostly shouldered by the medium and large business community with many paying heavy startup fees for the facilities build-out. Fiber deployment is costly and it is presently limited to densely populated parts of metropolitan areas. Logic and experience suggest that for the next few years leased lines are going to continue to remain in play for many companies.
The Future of Unified Communications As a Service
If there’s anything standing in the way of the continued growth of hosted telephony, it is the prospect of state and federal regulation. Voice over IP services, including hosted PBX, and other really innovative telecommunications advancements aren’t neatly pigeonholed into one legal category. VoIP could be considered a telecommunications service, but it depends on the Internet, which is not. The Internet isn’t heavily regulated, which means that it would be easy for new business VoIP companies to get into the game, and create a lot of healthy market competition. If they are regulated as telecommunications carriers instead, which currently is not the case, they would become subject to stiff regulatory guidelines.
How Can You Best Implement PBX Automation?
While your clients may not love automated systems, an auto attendant program represents a viable option to ensure the smoothest possible call flow at all times. With an eye towards simplicity, your phone system will connect your clients with your staff as seamlessly and painlessly as possible.