VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology is the future, in fact, almost the present of Business telephony. Every new office now is using the VoIP phone system. However, a few people are hesitant to make the switch. These people are worried about the cost of equipment, voice quality, emergency calls and so on. A lot of these worries would have been valid a few years ago when the technology was new; however, the technology has matured a lot today. The latest VoIP technology on good equipment can provide high-quality calls at a quite cheaper price compared to the traditional analog PSTN phone technology.
Why People are afraid of VoIP?
Costs
Switching to the VoIP includes some initial expenses. However, these in initial costs are quickly made up with the saving from inexpensive VoIP calls. A lot of businesses can do a lot better with cloud-based VoIP phone technology compared to the on-premise equipment. The cloud-based VoIP phone services avoid the up-front expenses of the on-premise equipment, along with the maintenance problems.
The SIP phone technology allows you the easiest use of every available feature; however, it is not compulsory to replace the replace existing phone equipment immediately. The low-cost analog telephone adapters can connect one or more analog telephones to the VoIP system network. VoIP phone calls are a lot inexpensive compared to the PSTN, particularly, when making long distance calls, hence the saving is quite more.
Call quality
A VoIP phone system which is based on good equipment can give you equal or even better than the PSTN connection. In the VoIP’s early days, dropouts and jitters were a big issue; however, in today’s VoIP system the calls are clear and have almost no noise constantly. The audio bandwidth of the PSTN is actually not that great. It drops the frequencies which are greater than 3.3 kHz. That is one reason why hold music is mostly dull. The majority of the VoIP phone system provides a high-definition voice, which can capture frequencies that are up to 7 kHz. The additional audio bandwidth makes it easy to understand call voices and much like caller’s in-person voice.
Complexity
If you think VoIP phone system is difficult to work out then you are wrong. You just connect the VoIP phone to the network and then you can use it just like any traditional phone. It might have a lot of extra buttons; however, those are only for extra feature, which you can learn if you require them. You will get the facility to forward calls and do conference calls which can be very helpful and it won’t be much difficult to figure it out. No doubt there are a lot more choices than you will ever require; however, you just have to learn about those which make it simple for you to use the phone.
Network Issues
The majority of the VoIP issues basically lie in the internet connection and in the local network, and not just in the communication over the internet. This means that these issues are in your control. You need a fast internet connection network for the voice bandwidth. You also need a router that can support Quality of Service (QoS) features to keep glitches and jitters at a minimum level.
Emergency Issues
There was a tie when lack of availability of the emergency calling services consistently was a concern. Although for almost a decade the European phone including VoIP services that connect to the public network is needed to support the emergency calling as a standard feature. The Business phone service providers are needed to provide the geo-location information anywhere it is technically possible.
The phone world has gone digital already
The fact is that no matter how you make the call, it is converted into bits for the majority of its trip. The analogue signals transmitted to the local exchange, where it is switched to a 64 kbps digital stream. All this happens at the pace of a snail in comparison to the speed of the internet. The digitalized voice signals are not even compressed; therefore, you get audio bandwidth of meagre 3.2 kHz of the out of it.
The Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) protocol offers the data and video services over the PSTN stream, just as slow as it is, however, it has a restricted future. The PSTN has provided reliable phone service for over a century; however, it is built on old technology. Most of the new large offices are using VoIP now. There is no reason for you to fear the switch, and there are a lot of reasons for you to obtain cost savings and a wide variety of features.
