Hosted services are delivered by VoIP Providers and is called various names in the telephone industry including Hosted PBX, Hosted VoIP, IP Centrex and Virtual PBX. The customer may only purchase telephone instruments, if any equipment at all, with Hosted VoIP services. Instead the VoIP provider maintains the central equipment at their Point-of-Presence (POP) saving the customer from large capital outlays.

Infonetics claims that the sweet spot for Hosted VoIP is small businesses under 100 employees. They also believe that the number of extensions on Hosted VoIP will nearly double between 2010 and 2012.

Does Your Business Need VoIP?

You should only purchase a VoIP enabled telephone system or select a Hosted PBX provider if you have business needs for VoIP technology and your network is ready to support VoIP. Obviously, if you have the needs but not the network, the network can be improved.

Here are some of the needs that VoIP will solve. In some instances, Hosted PBX or Hosted VoIP providers are specifically required to solve the issue as opposed to purchasing a VoIP enabled telephone system.

*The company has multiple offices with daily communication between them or the need to consolidate departments spread out among the offices. VoIP telephone systems provide the ability for phones spread out among a diverse geography to seamlessly communicate using data networks as if they were all in one building including dialing extensions and transferring calls.

*Remote or Work-at-Home employees that need to be a part of the company’s telephone system.

*The company’s budget does not support cabling for both the data network and telephones. VoIP telephones can share the same cabling to each desk with the computer.

*Telephones are regularly moved from office to office. Unlike digital phones that require a service technician to move them, VoIP telephones can be moved by the user within the office. Some IP telephone systems and most Hosted VoIP services will allow the user to plug the telephone into any place where it can access the Internet.

*The company needs to expand or contract in markets outside of their local calling area. Hosted PBX services allow customers to publish local telephone numbers in most United States and some foreign markets.

*The company has a limited budget for capital expenditure. Most Hosted VoIP services save capital expense by only requiring purchase of VoIP telephones and not the central equipment.

*The company has high long distance bills. VoIP telephone systems and Hosted VoIP services can eliminate long distance between remote offices and workers in remote areas. Some Virtual PBX services package domestic long distance with their calling packages.

*The company has seasonal business causing their phone needs to expand and contract. Hosted services will accommodate these rapidly changing needs.

*Individuals or departments need their own telephone number yet the expense of a PRI circuit from the telephone company is not affordable.

*One or more offices are located in disaster prone areas of power outages, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and floods. Hosted PBX services can keep processing calls when the office may no longer be standing.

If your company has one or more of these needs, then it is time to determine whether your network is ready for VoIP.

Is Your Network Ready for VoIP?

*Data cabling is required at all locations where VoIP telephones will be placed.

*For Hosted VoIP service and to bring outside telephones onto the VoIP telephone system, the Internet connection must be healthy. It should have enough bandwidth to support the desired number of concurrent calls and the data traffic and it must not periodically lose service.

*The internal network must contain 100MB Ethernet switches at a minimum. Absolutely no hubs should be in the network. Chaining Ethernet switches should be avoided as much as possible.

This is a cursory view of determining whether your business and network is ready for the tremendous advantages of VoIP communication. Your VoIP provider should do further analysis on both needs and network readiness.

Some supervisors have to see you in order to believe that you are working. These supervisors will probably never be willing to let you start working at home. Fortunately, most can make the transition one step at a time. Here is a step-by-step process to get your boss to gradually say ‘yes’ to your request to work from home:

Step 1: Establish Trust. Be seen as a self-motivated, self-starter with superior work ethic. This is crucial. If you have not already established trust with your boss with your work in the office, he will not be ready to believe that you will be a more dedicated employee out of his sight.

Step 2: Find an excuse to work from home for a day. Tell your boss that you need to meet with a plumber, cable repairman or take a delivery. Do not use watching your child. When you approach your boss for your home work day request, tell them which day you need to work from home, exactly what you will get done and how you can be reached.

Step 3: On your day at home, be organized with a list of what you will get done, be focused and work hard. This is your opportunity to give your boss a taste of what you can accomplish at home. Make sure it tastes good. Catch your boss later in the week and discuss how productive you were that day.

Step 4: Now that you have had a highly productive day at home, ask your boss for one work day a week at home to repeat that same productivity. Start off small with one day a week. Know the answer to common questions: How do you intend to maintain contact with coworkers? How to you plan to work around lack of face-to-face interactions? How often do you plan to come into the office?

Step 5: Prove one day a week to be successful. As in step 3, be organized with what you plan to get accomplished before the day begins. Stay focused and work hard. Here are 10 telecommuting tips for being responsible, efficient and productive. On top of these, make sure that you have set proper office hours for yourself and no slacking.

Step 6: Gradually expand your time at home. Have some acuity about when to ask for additional time working at home. Your valuable work from your house should always be your most compelling argument.

Telecommuting can be the optimal job for many of us and be best for our companies, too. According to Professor E Jeffrey Hill, telecommuters can work an extra 19 hours a week. Besides getting an extra 19 hours of productive work, here are an additional 29 reasons to telecommute. Now it is up to you to turn a good idea into reality.

If immediate action is not taken that insures a smooth transition, the company will experience many significant problems.  Porting telephone numbers may take several weeks.  If not done in time, your company will have its published numbers disconnected.  When callers call, they will hear that the number is disconnected leading many to believe your company is out of business or has not paid its phone bill.  Worse, there may be no quick fix.

Recovering these numbers from the telecommunications black hole caused by a vendor going out of business is difficult.  Recapturing numbers can take weeks or months, if ever.  In the interim, employees will spend time, effort and resources communicating new numbers to the public in addition to the lost advertising promoting a telephone number that can not be answered.

Losing a published number may not be the only problem.  Employee productivity will be hampered when they do not have a communication system to perform their duties.  Faxes may not get through and voicemails that contain important information could be lost.

Survival Tips

1.  Take quick action!  Select a new provider and start the porting process immediately.  If you can not decide on a new provider rapidly, then go to the Local Exchange Carrier (LEC) which is the incumbent landline provider for your area.  Have them port the number as a business line.  Do not put the number under contract with the LEC as this will create more problems once you have selected a new Hosted VoIP Provider.  At a minimum, you can hook an analog phone to it until you can decide who your new provider will be.

2.  Get all of your company’s important information off the failing provider’s system.  This includes listening to any voicemails on their system and writing down any numbers or other information that is needed.  Also, retrieve any speed dials that are stored on their system.

3.  There are many quality Hosted VoIP providers.  Do not pick another provider that may go out of service.  In other words, have your next Hosted PBX service supplied from a company that has been maintaining customers for at least 5 years.

4.  This is my most important tip!  If there is any risk that your number(s) will not be ported in time, pick a Hosted VoIP provider who has recovered lost numbers in the past.  Recovering lost numbers is a frustrating process littered with many brick wall obstacles and people who do not care.  Your Hosted VoIP provider must have “pit bull” employees who will go above and beyond the call of duty and will not accept “No” for an answer.

Today, many SIP Trunk and Hosted VoIP providers deliver Virtual Telephone Numbers at affordable rates.  Hosted VoIP providers also deliver their services under the name of Hosted PBX and Virtual PBX.  Most VoIP providers furnish their service with flat rate pricing as opposed to the telephone companies that can charge per minute rates several times greater than their long distance packages.  Some VoIP providers allow their customers to use Virtual Telephone Numbers as their outbound CallerID.

With the advent of affordable pricing and greater flexibility of Virtual Telephone Numbers from VoIP providers, here are their top 7 uses:

1.  Virtual Telephone Numbers can be forwarded to mobile phones.

Privacy and adequate down time is protected by supplying virtual numbers instead of mobile telephone numbers to key customers.

2.  Virtual Telephone Numbers help a company retain control of the contact numbers that callers use without having to supply mobile phones to employees.

Positions similar to inside and outside sales as well as real estate are examples where mobile phones are essential to the job.  Few employers provide mobile phones leaving the employee to give out their personal mobile number.  When they leave their position, their customers will still call them.  With Virtual Telephone Numbers, the company can easily redirect calls to any number they choose and retain control of who the customer calls.

3.  Virtual Telephone Numbers can be published in remote markets without needing a physical presence.

These numbers can ring to almost anywhere allowing home office employees to answer most calls and leave the remote employees to do their specific jobs.

4.  After closing down an office, the local published telephone numbers can be converted to a Virtual Telephone Number and forwarded to another office or someone’s home.

Offices can be closed and money can be saved without sacrificing the local feel to servicing the remaining customers in the area.

5.  While keeping the remote office open, local published telephone numbers can be converted to Virtual Numbers and ring to the main office or any other number of choice.

Remote employees who wear many hats and may be stretched thin on resources can have the burden of answering the phone relieved thus freeing essential personnel to handle other pressing matters.

6.  In some instances, major telephone line providers force their customers to change phone numbers when moving.

Virtual numbers can be forwarded to the office’s new telephone number.

7.  Advanced Hosted PBX and Hosted VoIP providers route calls to virtual numbers based upon the time of the day.

Calls can be automatically shifted to personnel on the West coast or to staff members assigned to work later hours.

Virtual Telephone Numbers are a powerful communication tool that delivers many flexible call handling options to business users.  Businesses can easily close and expand operations with their use as well as adjust duty assignments of remote personnel.  Advanced Hosted VoIP providers have the ability for their users to place calls using the Virtual Telephone Number as the outbound CallerID.  And finally, almost any number can be converted into a Virtual Telephone Number.

Deployment problems manifest themselves with quality of voice issues.    Technical articles which offer advice on solving VoIP voice quality problems discuss jitter, latency and MOS scores.  You do not have to become a VoIP nerd to make a phone call.  This article shares the most common deployment issues that cause jitter, latency and poor MOS scores without ever discussing them.

Symptoms of mild voice quality problems consist of robotic, distorted or slightly choppy voice.  In most cases, all the words can still be understood.  Moderate problems are occasional broken words which have to be repeated.  Severe problems include frequently distorted and choppy voice, lost sentences and dropped phone calls.  If you are experiencing any of the problems, here is a short list of common causes:

1. Voice Prioritization.  Most Internet connections are though DSL or Cable.  These connections typically offer more bandwidth from the Internet (download) than to it (upload).  Because the upload speed is smaller, voice packets usually need to be prioritized going out to the Internet.  If you can hear the outside caller just fine but they have trouble hearing you, than this may be the problem.

Voice prioritization MUST be enforced between the cable or DSL modem and your LAN.  More and more routers include this ability and it is becoming easier for the average user to set-up, however, a VoIP professional may still be needed.

Any use of a DSL or cable modem integrated WiFi access point is likely bypassing your voice prioritization.  Further, you may experience Internet problems just by having your WiFi radio active in your modem when using your microwave or cordless telephone.  It is strongly recommended that you disable this feature in modems and use a separate WiFi access point whose traffic must pass through voice prioritization to get to the Internet.

2.  Poor Service from Internet Service Provider (ISP).  VoIP is very sensitive to problems in the Internet and many ISPs do not take care that they provide a reliable circuit.  ISP networks are comprised of many routers frequently called hops.  Each hop has a potential for network congestion which may be fine for normal data traffic but will cause problems for VoIP.

Other causes of poor ISP service are faulty DSL or cable modem, old outside cabling that has become susceptible to weather and router problems within ISP network.  Further, DSL service may be degraded by frequency interference in the providers cable bundle, load coils and bridge taps.

Unfortunately, if you suspect poor service from your ISP, you need to test a different ISP, get a professional’s help or make use of a diagnostic tool.  I discuss a tool that you can use to inspect your ISPs network and pinpoint the exact location of a problem at the end of this article in my bio.

3.  Hubs and Ethernet Switches. Ethernet switches and hubs are the boxes that all of your data cabling connects to tie your computer devices together.  Your LAN cannot contain any hubs.  Instead Ethernet switches must be used, 100BaseT minimum.

4.  Multiple Chained Ethernet Switches.  Homes and offices with older wiring may use multiple Ethernet switches at desks, rooms and blocks of cubes to share single wiring drops back to the main LAN Ethernet switch.  Passing VoIP through multiple Ethernet switches to reach the Internet can cause problems.  Find ways to eliminate these extra devices through wireless access points and additional cabling.

5.  Insufficient Bandwidth for Number of VoIP Calls.  Without going into the dirty details of voice compression and codecs, you should in general have about 60kbps of upload bandwidth for every simultaneous voice call.  Insufficient bandwidth will choke your voice packets.

6.  Poor Wiring Inside Building before Cable or DSL Modem.  For DSL, each building or home has a DMARC (characterized by a wire block with orange cover) or Network Interface Box (homes).  The line carrying the DSL circuit should go straight from the DMARC to DSL filter and then DSL modem.  No other devices or connections should be in between.  Cable modems must work off of the primary splitter (not go through multiple splitters) and should be the leg with the highest decibel level.  When your cable repairman visits, he can verify.

7.  Other Applications May Prioritize Their Packets.  Any application can choose to use prioritization flags in their packets.  These applications may be in use with or without the network administrator’s knowledge including video and the myriad of consumer voice services such as Skype, Vonage, IMs, etc.  Assuming the use of these services is approved, your voice prioritization programming and Internet bandwidth needs to account for the extra bandwidth consumption.

These are 7 of the most common problems that may cause jitter, latency, poor MOS scores or just bad voice quality.  In some instances, you will need professionals to help with proper programming and problem detection.  Many tools exist as well.  If you believe all inside your house or building is in good shape, determining whether the problem is caused by your ISP can be difficult.

My website will make available a tool to check out your Internet connection in August of 2010.  Subscribe to my blog to be alerted of our new tool’s availability as it will deliver important knowledge and statistics when diagnosing Internet problems or dealing with your ISP.  It is free to use and nothing like it exists on the Internet today.  www.HostMyCalls.com