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Phones

The Benefits Of VoIP Over Traditional Phone Service

by Jeremy Miller, Technician
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is the general term used for transmitting two-way voice communication over a network.

This can work on any network, whether it be at home or work, connected to the Internet. VoIP can also be used for internal communications and do not necessarily need to be transmitted out to the Internet.

Plain old telephone system (POTS) is the traditional phone service that everyone is used to, and it is commonly known as a home phone.

This system is designed to run on dedicated electronic circuits and is transmitted using analog signals where VoIP uses digital.

There are many reasons that you should use VoIP over POTS many of which include cost and expansion. Where ever you have a network connection, VoIP can be implemented. POTS often are much more costly.

As I said before POTS requires a dedicated circuit to transmit on. This means every time you add a new phone you would have to run a phone line and a network drop.

POTS can become quite expensive for an office building if you have to run phone lines to each person’s office.

In the event of expansion POTS will require costly hardware upgrades and provisioning of new lines. VoIP will only require more bandwidth and possibly software upgrades which are generally inexpensive and very easy to do.

There is much more competition in the VoIP market. Where POTS may have a few providers to choose from in your area, VoIP will have hundreds to choose from on the Internet.

When using VoIP you have control over the traffic of the phone calls as well. This makes it easy to manage, record, and maintain all phone calls.

Many of the features such as call waiting, conference calling, music on hold, multiple extensions and voice mailboxes are all free with VoIP. These features have always come at a premium when using POTS.

VoIP does not limit you to what you can transmit over its call. For instance you can make a video call or a voice call using VoIP. While in your call you can send over an attachment which is quite similar to email.

There are downsides to using VoIP as well, but most of them can be mitigated. The first is unpredictable quality of service. You may not always get great sound or video quality.

This is usually dictated by the available bandwidth. If you notice your quality is not as good as you like, then you may need to upgrade your Internet speed or you network equipment.

VoIP may not always get you to the correct 911 responder in the event of an emergency. They are not centralized like POTS. The traffic could be routed around the world.

Since VoIP relies on the Internet and the Internet relies on electricity, you will lose your VoIP service if either Internet or electricity goes down.

This can be avoided by having a redundant Internet connection and battery backups for your network equipment.

You can also install an IP based private automatic branch exchange (PABX) which will allow you to integrate your POTS with VoIP so you can take advantage of VoIP and not lose the benefits of POTS.

If you are looking into VoIP or have any questions we would be happy to help.

Staying Connected When You Travel

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Summertime is vacation time for a lot of business owners, and keeping in touch with the office can be a challenge while you’re on the road. Here are some tips to stay in touch and connected – but only if you want to!

Cellular and mobile broadband
The single biggest change in mobile technology is the ubiquity of relatively high speed data service. Coverage has increased significantly, and speeds rival that of low-end landline connections.

Phones themselves have evolved – many are now small, powerful computers that are constantly connected to the Internet.

Tethering
Tethering is the act of connecting your phone to your computer so the computer can use the phone’s Internet connection. Sometimes inaccurately described as a “modem” in these situations, the phone simply acts as a gateway connecting your PC to the mobile data network.

Not all phones or providers support tethering. When available, it usually uses a USB cable to connect the computer to the mobile phone.

An option that’s becoming more popular recently is the ability of some phones to act as a Wifi hotspot. When enabled, the phone itself becomes a Wifi access point, and laptops and other Wifi-enabled devices can connect to the Internet just as they would via any other hotspot.

Cellular Hardware
If you don’t have a phone capable of sharing its Internet connection, another option are devices dedicated to providing Internet connectivity to your computer.

Many mobile providers offer USB devices that act as dedicated interfaces to the Internet using the mobile network.

Drawbacks of mobile broadband
There are two primary drawbacks to mobile broadband: Coverage, speed and cost. While decent voice service is nearly universal in all but the most remote locations in the US, good data coverage is a gamble.

It isn’t uncommon for one carrier to have “four bars” of coverage in an area, and another to have barely any, so if you travel much, particularly to more rural or remote areas, coverage matters. You can easily try out different carriers by purchasing “reloadable” service on that carrier – if the service doesn’t work, simply cancel without penalty.

Cost is another limiting factor to mobile connectivity. Most smartphones include some kind of base connectivity charge in their monthly fee, adding $20, $30, or more per month to the basic cost of the phone.

Free Wifi hotspots
At the other end of the cost spectrum are the networks of free open Wifi hotspots that you can find across the country.

Be it Starbucks, McDonald’s, local coffee houses, restaurants, bookstores, and more, many retail businesses provide Wifi as perk of doing business with them.

If your travels take you along routes populated with these types of establishments, you can travel from one to the other, taking advantage of their connectivity as you go. While technically free, the assumption is that you’re a customer – so at least buy a cup of coffee.

The drawbacks here include security and possibly speed. Depending on how heavily used the location is, your speed of access may depend on how many other users you’re sharing the connection with.

Does VOIP Phone Service Make Sense For Your Business?

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.
When we moved our office last month, part of the process included reviewing things like our telephone and Internet services.

Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone service is basically technology that allows you to make and receive calls over data networks.

Instead of traditional phone services which channel analog signals such as the sound of your voice over copper wires, VoIP converts these sounds to digital form first—so that they can be sliced, diced, packaged, and routed over a digital network.

Because VoIP technology uses the same ideas behind data networking, and allows the use of the same networks used by computers, voice traffic can also be routed through the Internet as well.

Suddenly you can now dramatically reduce the cost of voice communications, as well as achieve creative combinations of both services to create new applications for use.

VOIP (voice over IP) services have really evolved over the past few years. In the past, I’ve been hesitant to use it because the service could be flaky – and since 90%+ of our business comes in by telephone, I wasn’t comfortable with something that wasn’t reliable.

Fortunately for small business owners, that’s changed. The service is now as reliable as service from the phone  company. And with the ubiquity of high speed Internet service, call quality has improved to the point of being indistinguishable from the old telephone network.

Our switch to VOIP provided two significant improvements over the service we used before.

First, we increased our telephone line capacity and coverage. We’ve added telephone numbers for our client’s in Toledo, Dundee, and the downriver area to be able to call us locally.

Second – and perhaps more importantly – we’ve cut our  telephone costs in half.

Cost and coverage were my primary concerns when looking at a move to VoIP services. Here are a few reasons you may want  to consider switching to VoIP for your office:

You can make and receive calls from multiple devices – for instance, on a dedicated phone, your PC via a software-based phone, or even a mobile phone with VoIP capabilities.

It’s easier to add extensions to your phone. You can provide a local number or extension for all your staff without  additional costs or cabling.

VoIP allows your employees to be more productive and  efficient by giving them the ability to receive and make  calls anywhere with a data connection.

You can use VoIP as a tool for real-time collaboration along with video conferencing, screen sharing, and digital white boarding.

You can potentially unify your communication channels,  streamlining communications and information management—for instance, marrying email with fax and voice in one inbox.

You can employ presence technologies that come standard with VoIP phones and VoIP communication systems. This technology can tell colleagues about your presence or give you info on the status and whereabouts of your staff.

What To Do When You Drop Your Cell Phone In Water

If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to drop your cell phone into water, take some solace in knowing you’re not alone.

Dropping a cell phone into the swimming pool, bathtub or toilet is such a common occurrence that some cell phone manufacturers include a sensor that will detect if it’s been submerged in water, so users can’t return them saying they are defective.

If it happens to you, it’s important to act quickly. First, don’t turn the phone on until it has been completely dried out or you’ll probably end up shorting out some circuits. Cell phone repair services recommend taking out the battery right away and wiping it off.

Shake out any excess moisture from the phone. Unfasten the screws and open up the device. Then use an electrical-contact cleaning spray or rubbing alcohol to remove corrosive moisture. When you think it’s completely dry, wait another day before turning it on.

There are a number of recommended drying techniques, but the key to all of them is to dry the phone as soon as possible.

One proven phone-drying method is to use a hair dryer set on cool. You don’t want to use high heat – that could cause even more damage to the phone.

Another method is to seal the phone in a jar with uncooked rice. The rice absorbs the moisture, but it does take a few days.

Most important: Make sure you always back up your smart phone! Most cell phone providers offer this service, and many phones come with software you can load on your computer to perform a backup using a USB cable.

 

When Does VoIP Make Sense For Your Business?

The Voice over IP (VoIP) landscape has exploded in the last five years. In its early implementation, Internet-based telephony was a hassle to implement, inconvenient to use, and far less reliable than regular or traditional phone service.

Today, our cup runneth over with VoIP services and providers, with pricing and features packages appropriate for everyone from individual/home users to small/medium businesses to the very large companies.

VoIP lines can connect seamlessly to regular lines and wireless numbers; to the end user, making a VoIP call no different from placing a call on a cell phone or landline.

VoIP advantages
Early adopters of VoIP were motivated primarily by cost; depending on their phone usage and long distance habits, they could save tremendously on phone bills because:

  1. Most VoIP plans don’t charge extra for domestic long distance (and some services offer free international calls to certain countries, as well).
  2. VoIP services often include, at no extra charge, features for which the traditional telephone companies impose extra fees, such as caller ID, call forwarding, three-way calling, and voicemail.
  3. VoIP has not been subject to all of the taxes and government-imposed fees that make up a large portion of the typical phone bill.

The big tradeoff in the early days was a lower quality in voice transmission and occasional dropped calls—pretty much the same disadvantages that plagued cellular phone service in its early days.

However, as VoIP has matured, transmission quality and reliability have improved to the point where they’re now close to that of regular telephone service. VoIP users are also drawn by other advantages of IP-based voice services, including the ability to have VoIP phone numbers in the area code of your choosing, regardless of where you’re physically located.

In effect, this gives you a low-cost way to maintain a virtual “local” presence in cities in which you do business so that customers there can call you without long distance charges, at much lower cost than alternatives such as an 800 number.

Another great advantage is that many VoIP services offer free voicemail services such as e-mail notification when you receive a call (along with a .WAV file of your voicemail messages sent to your e-mail address) that are either not available or cost extra with traditional telephone service packages.

VoIP disadvantages
VoIP technology still has a few disadvantages when compared with traditional phone service. Most notable is the inability to make phone calls during an electrical outage or when the Internet connection is down for any reason. In addition, some services that depend on phone lines, such as monitored alarm services, may require a landline, although there are now some alarm companies that offer service that works over a VoIP line.

Businesses that must rely on their phone service should take steps to ensure that their disaster recovery/business continuity plans cover their VoIP service.

Measures might include maintaining some regular telephone lines for emergency use, backup generators, and/or redundant Internet connections with failover capability.

Finally, VoIP services are subject to the same security concerns as other Internet traffic.

Selecting VoIP services
Small businesses may be able to save a lot of money by using VoIP services primarily aimed at consumers, such as Vonage or Sunrocket. These and other consumer-level services offer small business plans with online account management and may include a separate fax line.

A good solution for a small or home-based business that only has two to five employees and needs only a couple of phone lines is to order two VoIP boxes and plug both into a two-line base station system that supports multiple two-line handsets. Each worker can then use either line.

Larger businesses may need features that consumer level VoIP providers don’t offer, such as the ability to transfer calls, put calls on hold, or create conference calls among more than three parties—although in some cases the telephone equipment you choose can allow these activities, even if the provider doesn’t offer them. Larger VoIP providers generally include features like conference calling, music on hold, call queuing, scheduling and remote office features, and fax support.

Regardless of the size of your company, VoIP is now a viable option to traditional phone service, and may allow you to get more features and a wider scope of calling at a lower cost.

Tech Experts Now Authorized To Sell, Install And Service ESI’s IP-Enabled Telephone Systems

Tech Experts recently became a factory authorized dealer for the ESI line of advanced communications business telephone systems. The ESI product line fits very nicely with our IT and computer services.

ESI telephone systems offer many features small and medium sized companies will find useful, but our primary motivation in taking on this product line was ESI’s converged voice and data platform. This is the future of business communications, and we’re excited to work with a company that is in the forefront of that technology.

What does “converged voice and data” mean? Simply, it is the combining of your data services, such as e-mail and Internet access, with your voice services, like voice mail, remote telephones and branch offices.

Here are some examples of how this system would work with your data infrastructure:

Remote telephones: Through the ESI telephone system, you can “Internet-enable” your phone system through a very secure VPN. You would then take a system feature telephone (just like the one that sits on your desk at the office) home, plug it into your high speed cable or DSL Internet at home, and the phone will connect to the office telephone system.

You have 100% of the features, services and extension capabilities at home, just as if you were sitting at your desk. This is perfect for taking orders at home, or for spending time working from home.

ESI-Link branch offices: If your business has multiple locations, you can connect ESI telephone systems together through the Internet – eliminating long distance charges between offices, or expensive tie-lines.

The systems interoperate as one unified system.

Unified Messaging: Receive your voice mails through email. This lets you forward them to others, keep copies on your computer for future reference, reply through e-mail, etc. This is a very cool feature.

Of course, the system offers a ton of other features any business would find useful. Take a quick look through these built-in features. How many would help your business?

Live call recording: With the touch of a button, record a conversation, conference call or personal reminder memo for later playback, as well as moving or copying to others’ mailboxes.

Perfect for making sure orders are correct.

Scalability: ESI Phone systems grow with your business. Most systems use the same telephones. As your business grows, you add to – not replace – your ESI telephone system.

Auto Attendant: Perfect for over flow call situations, or for a busy office. Provides extensive call routing, including directories, automatic day/night operation, off-premises transfer, pager notification and more.

Automatic Call Distribution: If you have a busy service or sales department, this is the feature for you. ACD places sales or service personnel in departments and either (a.) routes a call to the longest-idle agent or (b.) places the call on hold if all agents are busy and then immediately connects when the first agent is available. Constantly updates Feature Phone display regarding queues and wait times.

Voice Mail Delivery: You can program the system to call your cell phone when you have a voice mail, saving you from having to call in and check your voice mail.

Enhanced Caller ID: Lets you see who’s calling, screen calls going to your voice mail, and return calls with a single key press.

Verbal Help and Verbal User Guide: This is the most unique feature of any telephone system we’ve seen. A full, spoken tutorial is available at any time, as well as feature by feature help. No more looking at programming books!

These are just some of the interesting highlights. The system supports most all features you’d find on a business telephone system, at an affordable price. If you’ve been considering a new business telephone system, we’d appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about the ESI systems and how they can help your business grow.