Q:  What is Hosted VoIP/Hosted PBX service?

A:  Hosted VoIP/Hosted PBX service provides advanced telephone system features as a service over the Internet.  Many advanced features are uneconomical to include as part of a traditional telephone system.  Hosted service providers host the costly central equipment of the telephone system on their premise and use the same equipment for many of their customers. By hosting equipment, advanced features are delivered for a fraction of the normal cost.  Businesses no longer need to invest in the expensive central equipment of a telephone system.  In most cases, only phones will need to be purchased or leased.

Q:  What are the advantages of Hosted VoIP/Hosted PBX service?

A:  Hosted VoIP/Hosted PBX services offer many financial, operational and service advantages.  Financial advantages include lower capital expense, monthly payments are expensed instead of depreciated (phone system lease), more predictable and lower monthly recurring bills, easier and less expensive to expand, reduced maintenance and repair costs and scaled down office space from sending employees to work from home.

Beyond financial advantages, operational advantages boast improved call capacity, sending and receiving multiple faxes at a time, effortlessly distributing faxes, Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) for handling calls, easy telecommuter set-up and private and departmental telephone numbers.  Service advantages add quicker service response and diagnostics, 24 hour a day monitoring, easy disaster recovery and Mobile PBX.

Q:  Why is it so inexpensive?  What’s the catch?

A:  With many quality Hosted PBX/Hosted VoIP providers, there is no catch.  Delivering telephony services within the hosted model is simply more efficient and affordable than purchasing telephone system hardware and paying monthly for telephone lines.  Be wary of hosted plans that charge per minute for local and domestic long distance calls.  These plans can charge unpredictable, exorbitant usage charges on their monthly bills.

Q:  What are the common problems?

A:  The most common problem of Hosted VoIP users is their Internet connection.  The Internet connection must be large enough to handle the highest number of simultaneous calls and must be stable.  Read my article “Will Your Internet Connection Destroy Your VoIP Service” for more information.

Another common problem is occasional long delays in porting numbers.  If the porting paperwork is filled out incorrectly, delays can result.  In most cases, your old carrier and not your new Hosted VoIP provider cause the delays.  There are workarounds to porting delays such as call forwarding.  Your service provider should be able to help you.

One final common problem is loss of common features.  Although Hosted PBX services offer many new powerful features, some services lack common features that are taken for granted with smaller phone systems.  Busy Lamp Field (BLF), paging and off hook voice announce are examples of a few features that may not be offered by certain Hosted VoIP providers.  Before you select your provider, survey for the most common features used and make sure your provider delivers those capabilities.

Q:  What kind of Internet do I need?

A:  Your Internet connection can be DSL, cable modem, fixed broadband or wireless.  The type of Internet is less important than the size and stability of the circuit.  Click the link Four Steps to Determine Whether Your Internet Connection is Ready for VoIP.

Q:  If my Internet is down, are my phones down?

A:  If your Internet is down, all the phones behind that Internet connection will be down as well.  But it does not mean that you cannot receive your phone calls.  Your Hosted VoIP automated attendants and voicemails will still be functioning.  Some Hosted PBX services can automatically re-route calls in the event of an Internet failure to your other phones that may be using a different Internet connection or to other 10 digit telephone numbers such a cell phones.  Some advanced VoIP providers can shift calls to back-up or secondary Internet connections as well.

Q:  How easy is it to relocate the service?

A:  For most Hosted VoIP providers, moving the service may be as easy as plugging the phones into the LAN at a new location.  If the service provider has installed any routing equipment, then that may require some additional programming.  Regardless, when compared to moving a traditional telephone system, Hosted VoIP services are extremely easy to move and much less costly.

Q:  Can I take my phone home with me or on the road?

A:  If the Hosted VoIP service works over the Internet and does not require a VPN connection, then the answer is usually ‘Yes.’

Q:  What will the voice quality be like?

A:  Excellent assuming the following:

1.  The Internet bandwidth is sufficient to support the maximum number of simultaneous calls required.  You can check for this by reading “Four Steps to Determine Whether Your Internet Connection is Ready for VoIP” linked above.

2.  Voice packets are correctly prioritized going out to the Internet.  (Your provider may have to manage voice prioritization for you.)

3.  The Internet connection is stable.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 1:09 pm and is filed under ACD, Busy Lamp Field, Hosted PBX, Hosted VoIP, Internet, WiFi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.