Voice over internet Protocol (VoIP) is multi-faceted because it has the capability to enhance traditional phone technology and to reduce the cost of phones greatly. However, there are still some businesses that are suspicious of VOIP technology because either they heard some bad stories from their peers or they have had a bad experience with VoIP technology because of poor VoIP implementation. Nonetheless, there are some tools and accurate knowledge which can help you implement VoIP technology in the correct manner, so that it is more efficient and reliable. Hence, in this article, we are going to discuss a number of the essential concepts that are involved in setting up a reliable VoIP configuration.
In order to know the latest trends in telephone technology, you do need some of the background contexts. VoIP was the product of planned tactics by the telecommunication companies, so they could remove additional costs from their traditional copper landlines. Before the mid of the 1990s, all of the phone calls made were carried over a single copper landline. You have to remember that in those days if the power went out the phone line still worked. Those were analogue calls, simple old phone service provided with 48 volts of DC power when every phone was ‘on the hook’.
These days every analogue line has been transformed into the DSL which stands for Digital subscriber lines. Therefore, landline phones now connect to an analogue or to digital converter equipment rather than directly into a wall. This is how the DSL subscribers get phone and internet working via a single copper line. Now the old POTS lines are VoIP.
You might think that why is there a mistress that exists for over internet protocol? The answer is that it is complicated. Therefore, rather than just aimlessly discussing the issue we are going to be focusing on the more productive solutions. There are a lot of factors that you need to consider while implementing VoIP Technology for your business. So below we have mentioned some factors which can help you run a successful phone system for small business.
Set up a second internet connection to make sure there is nonstop service
Having a second internet connection is just like having a backup battery in case of power failure. In simple words, if your main internet connection goes down or has an error then a second backup connection will automatically kick in and will provide you with constant service of voice and data. It is essential that these connections are supplied by different vendors. And it is also important that the mediums of two connections are different for example, copper + fibre optic, fibre optic or copper + cable. With an average VoIP Technology, you can save between 30 to 50% from your capital.
A High-quality VoIP phone call utilizes almost 80Kbps of the data. Internet connections carry two separate types of speed, upstream and downstream. The connections with similar upstream and downstream speed are called synchronous connections. Connections with the non-similar speeds are called asynchronous connections. This means that a 10mbps synchronous connection has the capability to manage almost 125 calls at a time (10Mbps= 10000Kbps/80Kbps=125). Whereas, a 10Mbps asynchronous connection might have a lot less capacity such as a 10Mbps ADSL connection might just give 768Kbps of upstream bandwidth. This means a capacity of only 9 calls at the same time. Remember all this information when considering a DSL connection as your backup connection.
Select your SIP (session initiation protocol) vendor very cautiously
Every single VoIP provider depends on the SIP trunk. In simple words, this trunk allows the inbound and outbound voice calls through the Global Digital Network and the traditional public switching Telephone Network (PSTN). SIP (session initiation protocol) trunks are extremely important because they are the gateway to major capital savings on voice communication, faxing and SMS text. Still, you have to be careful because there are a few low-end SIP vendors available in the market who utilize a technology known as Least Cost Routing LCR. This means that the provider will route your VoIP phone calls possibly in the cheapest way. Hence select your VoIP provider very wisely.
Secure your VoIP setup
If you properly secure your VoIP phone system then you can prevent it from the hackers gaining any kind of unauthorized access to your system. However, you have to be aware of the fact that if in any case your system gets compromised or if any unauthorized calls are made then it could cost you a lot. There have been cases where a lot of businesses went months without having any idea that their business systems were hacked and they had loss thousands of pounds in international calling charges.
VoIP phone system which is built on the open-source phone platform Asterisk are usually subjected to several hacking attacks and have to be avoided. Therefore, we recommend you to use a session initiation protocol proxy which is a service that routes any request to the user’s location then authenticates and authorises the user for services. On the contrary, a virtual private network (VPN) might be employed to encrypt and secure the voice transmission over the system.
Implement quality of service on your network
Quality of service (QoS) is an important mechanism. It prioritises the specific number of data traffic over the other set of data traffic, in order to let the high priority data packets of information get to the destination within a particularly set time. Because all VoIP calls are digital data packets so without the Quality of Service the calls might sound a bit fuzzy, choppy or jittery. Some calls may even have echo or the call might even get dropped. If you fail to implement an effective Quality of Service on the internal network then it could lead to adverse user experiences and ultimately leading to unsatisfied customers. This probably is the reason which has given the VoIP Technology a bad name.
Assess the quality of your voice over internet protocol services
It is essential to have a way for assessing the quality of all business-related services, for a lot of apparent reasons. If you already use VoIP phone number then you should ask your telecom or IT, service supplier for something that is called the MOS score. The MOS is the Mean Opinion Score. It has been utilised for many decades in the phone networks to get the human user’s review of the quality of the network. Furthermore, a MOS 5 score means the quality is same just like a face to face talk. Whereas, a score of 1 means absolutely terrible performance. A standard MOS score of 4 or more is a satisfactory result.
Consider employing the cloud (hosted) PBX
PBX (Public Branch Exchange) is an acronym that is still in use mostly because there are a lot of people who link PBX with the phone. Today’s phone systems are not mounted on the wall rather they run on the enterprise-class service or in the ‘cloud’ where 100% uptime is guaranteed, on power, and internet protocol services are offered. Several virtual servers are able to run on single physical equipment by installing second physical equipment like shared storage and installing the virtualizations software like VMware, along with a VMWare backup solution from NAKIVO, you can construct a strong foundation for a multi-user with cloud phone system. Whenever the phone system is said to have a high availability it is rational to expect 99.99% of the uptime or even Higher.
To conclude, there are a lot of factors that have played a role in developing the distrust of VoIP technology. The traditional communication companies that have misrepresented their services, or have forced monopolistic usage caps along with practicing anti-competitive behavior are responsible for creating a misunderstanding in the market regarding VoIP technology and what it actually means. Therefore it is not surprising that a lot of businesses don’t trust VoIP. But, certainly, cloud-based VoIP services are rapidly growing as the standard method of enterprise-grade, feature-packed system of communication for a lot of businesses, on-profit organizations, and government organizations worldwide. If a deliberate and Technical implementation of VoIP technology is done then it can unlock a tremendous amount of value while still remaining steady, reliable, and secure.
