May 7, 2024
Understanding Hosted VoIP Phone Systems: Features and Benefits
share
share
For most businesses, having a reliable phone system is a necessity. Modern telecommunications technologies offer many advantages in this area, specifically with Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Instead of relying on traditional telephone lines, businesses can take advantage of the host of benefits offered by digital phone service by choosing Hosted VoIP.
Let’s take a deeper look at the fundamentals of how Hosted VoIP works and the numerous advantages it offers businesses, both financially and operationally.
How does a Hosted VoIP phone system differ from a traditional business phone system? The most obvious difference is that VoIP uses the internet to make phone calls. Traditional phone systems use copper wires to transmit phone calls. That means that VoIP calls can be made anywhere you have an internet connection. Traditional landline calls are only an option where copper lines are present.
Hosted VoIP is transmitted over fiber optic cables, which have significantly more bandwidth than copper lines. Copper can reach a point where no more data can be sent without a reset, which can result in call quality issues, dropped calls, and other problems. Fiber optics doesn’t suffer from such problems.
There are many advantages to Hosted VoIP that you don’t get with traditional phone systems. Hosted VoIP is less expensive, much more scalable, and offers advanced features that you don’t get with a landline.
To give you a better idea of how VoIP differs from landlines, let’s examine some of the primary features VoIP offers:
This is probably the biggest selling point for most businesses. Hosted VoIP is cheaper than landlines, and the cost savings become especially noticeable as you start to scale up by adding additional lines and capacity.
Copper lines are expensive to install and maintain. Adding additional lines can require additional installations and creating a robust phone system on-site requires installing a private branch exchange (PBX). A PBX can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
In contrast, Hosted VoIP can add and remove lines quickly and cheaply. It can work as well for a business with 200 lines as it does for a business with 10 lines.
A Hosted VoIP system can handle a lot, including conference calling and video conference calls. Collaboration becomes easier between stakeholders and employees because there are fewer limits on who can talk to whom and when.
Your voicemails are kept in the cloud with a Hosted VoIP phone system. That offers several advantages. First, you can access them from anywhere with an internet connection. Second, it’s possible to have the system transcribe your voicemails into text which can then come to you through email. This transcription feature makes it easier to decide which voicemails are important and which are not.
A Hosted VoIP phone system is extremely mobile, which makes it ideal for those who travel frequently and for remote work. You can have the office phone, home phone, and mobile phone all set up on the same number. Since your VoIP system is not tied to a physical line, it’s also simple to move the entire system from one location to another. Unplug at one location and plug in at another and you are good to go.
It’s typical for a Hosted VoIP phone system to be capable of handling multiple users doing different things at the same time. Some people can be on calls, others on video conference calls, and still others using the internet or web applications. A quality VoIP system can handle all of these simultaneously, which does wonders for productivity and efficiency in the workplace.
If a device can connect to the internet, there is a good chance you can use it over a Hosted VoIP system. Phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and other devices should be capable of using the system to make phone calls. The same can’t be said for traditional landlines.
Another favorite feature of a Hosted VoIP phone system for businesses is scalability. You can quickly add or remove lines from your system. This can be useful if your small business is growing, or if you have seasonal operations that require adding significantly to your workforce for a temporary period.
A VoIP service is ideal for remote work and multiple business locations. It’s possible to assign phone numbers across multiple devices, so remote workers can use their work phone numbers wherever they happen to be. Since these systems scale so easily, it’s possible to use them across multiple locations or move them from location to location as needed.
The cost savings with a VoIP phone system can be significant. Some estimates put the savings for businesses at between 50% and 75% over traditional phone lines. Individual cost savings will vary.
A quality hosted VoIP provider utilizes advanced IP technology, including encryption and better identification management, to protect customer data.
What measures are in place to prevent potential breaches or hacks? The answer depends on the VoIP provider. Reputable service providers will submit to independent security audits and train staff to protect the identity information of customers.
As long as a building is equipped with broadband internet, it should be possible to utilize a Hosted VoIP system. The hardware required for VoIP is limited and relatively inexpensive. All you really need is a modem and a phone capable of operating over the internet.
If you have an existing landline phone system that you want to integrate with a Hosted VoIP system, it requires a little more hardware, but not much.
Hosted VoIP systems can integrate with most business tools and software that utilize the internet.
The call quality on a Hosted VoIP phone system is better than the call quality of a traditional phone system. Much like video, the audio quality is high definition and clearer than the analog voice quality on copper lines.
If you would like to take advantage of all the benefits of a Hosted VoIP phone system for your business, please get in touch. Our team is standing by to answer your questions and help you save money on your business phone system.
