Saturday, March 7, 2009

Use Voice Over IP to Cut Phone Bills by as Much as 80%

By Frank Newman

Long distance phone bills are expensive, and totally unnecessary! Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP uses the same technology that has made snail-mail nearly obsolete " the internet! Business Voip service functions in the same way as a traditional office phone system; it just utilizes your existing internet connection rather that phone lines. The result is that the majority of good VoIP providers include unlimited long distance at a flat rate, as opposed to the per minute charges from Ma Bell telecoms that hike up phone bills.

The majority of essential business services are not interchangeable. There isn't an alternative to expedited shipping with Fedex or DHL. Finding an alternative to the power company would be nice, but isnt a realistic option. High phone bills on the other hand are easily replaced.

A business class Hosted PBX (short for Private Branch Exchange) offers all the features that a business needs to create a professional customer facing presence without the high cost of enterprise level equipment. In the same way that a hosting company's server hosts your website, a PBX company's server hosts your phone system, and you can login on a webpage to manage all the functions of your phone system. These phone functions are identical to the switch board operators from the olden days, except like almost everything else these days, software does the job. You get Auto-attendants, Virtual Extensions, Voice Mail to Email, Call Forwarding, and Unlimited toll free numbers, all for a fraction of the cost.

HD voice will soon be as omnipresent as HD TV. Old traditional phone lines wont be able to use HD voice, similar to how the rabbit ears on old television sets that pick up the outdated airwaves cannot receive HD TV. Only IP phones will have HD voice, since they receive calls over high-speed internet connections like the T1 connection that many businesses have in their offices.

If your business has high call volume, there is no reason not to use Voice over IP. Most VoIP companies are waving set up fees. There is an up front cost of purchasing VoIP phones, but the month to month cost savings of phone bills will offset this initial expense within the first couple of months, and from there on out bills will be much much lower.

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