VOIP phone line is probably the most important requirement because you subscribe to the provider just like you would to any other normal phone company that allows you to receive and make calls outside of your office. Without a VoIP provider, you are just able to dial extensions within your office. There are different types of VoIP provider in the market with different plans and different rates.
When you decide which solution is better suited for your business, the on-site or hosted, then you will just have to look for a VoIP service provider which can deliver you the solution you want. You should look for certain things like the service level agreements, customer recommendations and uptime before you decide to sign up with the provider.
Steps to Set up VoIP Phone Line:
1. Broadband Internet Connection
The more phone calls volume you have the bigger the bandwidth you will require. For example, if you have a low call volume then maybe you can use a bandwidth of 7 Mbps/700 kbps. The amount of bandwidth you need depends on how much call volume you have.
If you want to ensure whether you have sufficient bandwidth or not, you can ask your potential VoIP provider how big their voice packets are, then you can multiply that number by the number of concurrent calls you will make so that you can see how much bandwidth you VoIP calls will take up.
2. VoIP Phones and Equipment
Before you deploy your VoIP phone services in your office you should determine how every employee will get connected to your VoIP service vendor. There are several choices of VoIP equipment on the market today.
- Soft Phones: a softphone is a software program that runs on your computer. It looks and feels similar to the real phone. This needs you to buy a USB headset that connects your laptop or desktop so that you can make and receive phone calls.
- Digital IP Telephones: these Digital IP phones are just like the regular multi-line business phones except that these phones connect directly to your internet network through a network cable.
- Analog Telephone Adapters (ATA): Ann ATA is a small box that connects to your router and enables you to plug-in the regular analog phones so they can work with the VoIP. Usually, ATAs are a quite inexpensive alternative to the digital office telephones and these are easier to take with you wherever you go.
- Wi-Fi Phones: A Wi-Fi phone just looks and feels like the regular mobile phone except that these phones connect to your wireless router in your office.
3. A router
A router is an important device because it connects all of your network equipment and computers to your internet network connection. Often, it is an overlooked part of the puzzle which can have a big impact on the success or failure of your VoIP implementation.
There are a lot of routers available in the market these days; a few of them are quite cheap while others can cost you almost thousands of pounds. There can be nothing worse than employing a poor quality or underpowered router in your office. This could make your good VoIP installation go bad. You need a router that is powerful enough to manage the number of phones you are going to employ in your office. Further, it should work seamlessly with your VoIP equipment. If you want to start looking for a router then you should talk to your VoIP service provider. Further, we suggest that you should check to ensure that your router is compatible with the VoIP services.
