Gregory Burrus asked:


It seems that each year in this age of the internet, that every day there is a new technology being introduced. If you are like most of us, you are looking for technology to work for you not against you? Have you heard of Voice over internet protocol but not sure if it is worth your time and energy to explore the possible benefits to your business?

In this article we will demonstrate that Voice over internet protocol is a very powerful technology that transcends your normal latest greatest technical tool that is being introduced but you can't see how it applies to you. As the voice component of IOVC strategy and technology, we will list capabilities that you can use to reduce your business expenses and improve your ability to attract customers using just this one technical component.

Voice over internet protocol is a well known technology in some areas and in others it is relatively unknown. However as one of the internet, office, voice and customer management technologies, IOVC, it is a voice over internet protocol technology, which you may not realize, can work wonders for your business. Voice over internet protocol to most people know it as tool that can reduce their phone bill but not necessarily as a tool to help improve and grow their business. But you can use voice over internet protocol technologies:

1. As your phone service and eliminate your current traditional phone service

2. To reduce your phone bill and save some money in your pocket

3. As a marketing tool and let it help you brand your business

4. To run Teleseminars for a very low cost

5. To record audio messages and talk for you when you are not available

6. As your instant support tool and show your customers you are very customer focused

7. For voice mail when you can't be available

8. To open up international office and do this all in 5 minutes

9. For your call forwarding service and let voice over internet protocol enable you to go mobile now

10. As an office extension especially if you need to build a bigger office or add on staff

11. To pay your bills as a convenient way to send money to your Paypal contacts

12. To integrate with Microsoft Outlook and save time, money and energy

As you can see from the list of Voice over internet protocol capabilities above, this voice technology has many beneficial capabilities. It is one of the reasons this IOVC technology is starting to garner more attention in the small business community.

Most people as you can imagine only use Voice over internet protocol as phone replacement technology. But now that you know it can help you market your business, or help you present your business, even when you can't be there in person. The fact it can help you pay your bills while on the road should show you this can be one powerful tool The fact that most of this comes for free should really excite you.



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Digital Landing asked:


Internet voice offers plenty of potential savings and productivity for small businesses. You can pay a fixed fee for monthly calling plans that include unlimited long distance coverage of North America and have the ability to program your phone to follow your movements without ever having to talk to a phone company representative ever again.

As an example, you have access to a wide range of business services that previously were only available to larger corporate users, including: call forwarding, multiple simultaneous rings (where an incoming call can be answered wherever it is more convenient), follow me (where incoming calls are routed to particular numbers at particular times of the day), and do-not-disturb. All are now part of most Internet voice service plans at no extra charge.

The downside is that your phone is more closely tied to your Internet service, which is less reliable than standard land-line phones. If your connection goes south, so does your phone service.

There are three basic different types of business Internet voice service. Most providers offer monthly plans that start at $50 per line including Verizon's VoiceWing for Business, AT&T's CallVantage, Packet8.com's Virtual Office and various business phone plans from other high-speed Internet providers that are basically a two-line version of their consumer service. All of those offer minimal features and are designed for a single office location. They also make use of standard or analog telephones that you buy in any office supply store.

The next step up from these plans are ones from what is called a "hosted service" that is provided by VirtualPBX.com, M5Net.com, Bandwidth.com and numerous others. Basically, those providers rent you space on their systems and connect up your offices via high-speed Internet lines. They typically start at several hundred dollars a month but also include a high-speed Internet connection that you can use for other applications such as Web and email.

The most expensive level is buying your own Internet voice PBX, or phone switch. That can cost more than $1,000 for the switch, and more than $500 a month for the various plans, and is designed for larger offices. Both Linksys and D-Link offer less expensive switches but require configuration and help from a consultant.

Here are some questions to ask before you decide on which business plan is the right one for you.

1. How many incoming phone numbers do you need?

If you have inbound fax lines and analog answering machines that you can't or won't get rid of, you need to figure out a plan for either keeping these lines or substituting work-arounds to continue using these phones. The various Internet voice services also vary in their support for inbound analog lines, something that is also worth investigating.

This is also a good time to calculate how many new digital phones you'll need to buy. Given that prices are rapidly dropping on phones, it doesn't make much sense to buy any more than what you need at first.

Also, you will want to investigate whether you can keep your existing inbound office number(s) when you move to the new Internet voice system. Some of the providers can move your numbers in some locations, and some can't. It is worth checking: There are many reasons why they can't be transferred - some political, some technical - but if you need to keep your existing numbers you may have to continue to pay your local phone company for minimal service for these lines.

2. How many different offices will you want to tie together under a single plan?

If you are just buying service for a single location, start with the simplest plans and see if they will meet your calling needs. Things get complicated quickly as you involve having multiple, geographically distant offices that can be connected via one central office number. Do you want everyone in these offices to have their own extension, to give the impression that they are all working out of the same "office?" That is what providers such as VirtualPBX.com are geared toward.

3. What kind of high-speed Internet service do you presently have to your office?

The type of connection is critically important to your experience with Internet voice business service. Voice quality is directly related to things such as network latency and packet delays that can cause drop-outs and degrade the overall audio of your calls. You will need to hire someone who specializes in Internet voice applications or spend some time understanding these issues and testing your existing connection. If you hire an Internet voice consultant, he or she should be able to do that for you.

Before you attempt anything, a good place to start is with TestYourVOIP.com, a free service that can indicate whether your connection is fast enough to support voice applications. Ideally, you want to purchase what is called a T-1 line for an office that has more than five people.

4. Do you need to upgrade your office wiring and network?

If you are working out of a home office or a place where you can wire up your phones, then you are in better shape for Internet voice, because you will probably need to do some wiring. Internet phones require more recent and higher quality network wiring than your average computer. Again, your voice consultant should be able to make the appropriate recommendations, but realize that this could be part of the cost of the overall job, and it could get pricey if you have to replace switches, routers and other network gear.

A second issue is whether you want to deploy Power over Ethernet switches to power your new digital phones. Sure, you can plug the new phone into a standard AC wall socket, but that might not be convenient or as reliable as having them get their power from a central wiring closet that has battery backup in case of power failures. Here again, you may be looking at buying new switches to handle that.

5. Do you want to make or receive calls from your laptop?

One of the big advantages of Internet voice is being able to take a phone and connect it anywhere on the Internet and have it work as if it is sitting in your office. But to get to this point, you need equipment that can support remote users. In some cases, you will need a phone that has a built-in Virtual Private Network client (Snom.com sells such IP phones, for example) to connect to your corporate network, just like a remote PC user uses. You'll also need a good quality USB headset to make the calls and have software that works with your Internet Service voice provider.



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Lecia Macryn Voice Services asked:


More and more businesses who use voicemail and voice prompts for their phone system including  pbx, auto attendant  and IVR system developers are realizing that their  telephone voicemail and voice prompt recordings play a large role in impressing customers and bolstering their image. Those businesses and voice prompt developers who want their company to reflect a professional image are utilizing professional voice talent such as Lecia Macryn Voice Services www.Macryn.com who specialize in recording custom voice prompts and voicemail greetings for all types of phone systems, cell phones, auto attendant, pbx systems, and IVR (Interactive Voice Response).

Professionally recorded voice greetings and prompts help clients feel they are associating with a stable, established company and make a positive impression.  Callers are more apt to place more confidence in a company or phone interaction where the phone presence is confident, clear and professional. 

Voice greetings and voice prompts can be sent via internet in any format or recorded into any phone, including mobile/cell phones.  Lecia Macryn Voice Services, www.Macryn.com  works with small and large businesses, ivr developers, customer satisfaction survey companies, auto attendant/pbx systems, and all types of telephony applications and projects.  Most recording requests can be delivered same day, if needed and a free sample audition is provided as well to ensure the voice recordings are what the client wants.

Lecia Macryn Voice Services has been providing recordings for clients worldwide since 1993 and can accommodate the small business owner who has just one basic voicemail recording ...to the most extensive voice prompt application entailing thousands of recordings,

Demos and more information is available at: www.Macryn.com or call Lecia Macryn Voice Services at (248) 288-2242.



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Scott White asked:


The new technology surrounding Voice over Internet phone plans (VoIP Phones) and all the different ways they can deployed in home and office environments, makes VoIP confusing to a lot of people. For home users and cell phone customers, it is very simple to use and no knowledge of VoIP technology is needed. Yet, VoIP usage is still not at the level many industry experts thought it should be. The VoIP consumer marketplace is competitive with phone companies and VoIP providers battling for the consumer's minds and wallets. As long as consumers are content and don't understand VoIP service and its value, the big phone companies can keep charging excessively high phone call rates and providing fewer services.

Many consumers still lack the information about VoIP phones and Internet phone service plans they need to make a shift to VoIP. Many will wait until there is a critical mass effect. That's when a large number of people will shift to VoIP and when VoIP lingo is a common part of people's vocabulary. Since VoIP operates seamlessly with current phone systems, it's not a technology that jumps out at people.

Not long ago Google was an obscure web search engine that had little consumer usage. But then Google started to make noise, and it did so with the help of students and web marketers who believed it had something to offer. Now, the word Google is used as a verb and people wonder how they ever got along with its info finding magic. VoIP is starting the same way but still hasn't found a way to move into mainstream consumer lifestyles. Rest assured though, that VoIP companies are targeting a variety of consumer demographic groups such as teens with cell phones, migrating people to Europe and North America who want to stay in close contact with their relatives back home, and businesses with multiple distant office locations who need inter-office phone communications. For regular home phone users, the value proposition they're receiving is not as compelling. That will change too as VoIP companies research ways to make that home phone service more valuable to consumers, or to make it unnecessary to keep it.

That critical mass event happens when users believe they have a clear cost savings advantage to make the switch from using their regular telephone service to a VoIP phone service. Being able to dump the home phone would certainly provide a reduction in monthly bills, but consumers aren't dropping their expensive land lines, even though they may have cable television and cell phone bills to boot. In telecommunications, it seems consumers are over-serviced, and a solution is needed. Internet telephony has that potential to eliminate some of the redundant services, but it hasn't matured to the point where it can shape the phone services market by itself.

Phone companies in defending themselves, put a fair amount of effort into discussing the possible downside of VoIP and some have even put restrictions on VoIP transmissions to try to thwart VoIP service providers. Old stories of lost calls, garbled voice quality, non functional 911 assistance, and loss of privacy don't carry much weight anymore though. Quality and technical issues are almost all resolved and the services continue to improve. So, if it's not technical issues that are preventing widespread VoIP adoption, then what is the problem?

Need to Drop the Land Line

Many consumers won't adopt a VoIP service until they can drop their current phone company land line completely. Despite the desire to do so, many appear to be resisting eliminating their dependence on the old lines. Most don't want to be paying for two phone services at the same time, yet they do. A billion people on the planet have cell phones now, so that means there are a lot of phone lines that aren't necessary, or that are too expensive given the value they offer. As long as phone companies can make customer's land lines indispensable, or encourage them to stay put, they know their customers won't switch to VoIP plans. So that leaves many consumers with more than one phone, a home phone and a mobile phone, and it's costing them a lot of money.

For those who don't make frequent long distance phone calls, the cost savings from VoIP service plans aren't compelling enough. However, when you add the cost of the call and line features that phone companies add onto the monthly phone bill, the scenario changes. Call features such as caller ID, call blocking, call waiting, and voice mail, are free with VoIP plans. If these aren't enough to entice consumers, VoIP companies will certainly look to sweeten the offer. Internet protocol communications are improving all the time and there will be more to offer the consumer such as; services via PDA's, Blackberries, and IP hard phones connected to WiFi and WiMax services.

Internet Phoning Drawbacks

When VoIP users make a call to another VoIP user, the call is essentially free. However, not everyone has a VoIP-based phone to receive VoIP calls. Many only have their land line or in some cases, a cell phone. That means the call has to go from the Internet into the PSTN or public switched phone system in the destination state or country. This is where the cost of a call shows up. Usually the cost is low for terminating the call to the end user. If the caller is making a long distance call however, this nominal cost is a small sacrifice compared to what they'll be paying on their traditional home phone service.

High speed DSL customers must have their basic phone service, so as long as they need the high speed Internet connection, they might not switch to VoIP. For cable subscribers, a land line is not needed and VoIP works very well with Cable Internet service. For cable subscribers, the land-based home phone really isn't needed so the jump to VoIP should be an easy one for cable subscribers. If they aren't making the leap to VoIP, it might indicate a lack of confidence in cable networks. Most people still have trouble comprehending that a voice telephone call can go through the cable company, or that it will be reliable. Cable companies have come a long way with their technology and networks and are more than capable of providing top notch phone services.

With better education of telecommunications consumers and the presentation of a solid value proposition that offers more than a little cost savings, VoIP will grow steadily. For those with international calling needs, VoIP is already the solution they're looking for. For small businesses with lots of long distance calling, the savings are even more pronounced. What's needed is more consumer education. With that, many will finally wean themselves from their dependence on that old analog-based land line telephone and launch into an era of cheap digital phone calls. That day is coming soon as the major phone companies are under increasing pressure to raise the price of local phone service in the face of a major shift to VoIP transmission. Critical mass will occur when price plus features create a force that overcomes consumer's inertia.



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Digital Landing asked:


If you have long distance phone bills on your home phone that are more than $50 a month, it is time to consider ways that you can save some real money by making use of one of many different technologies called digital voice or Voice over Internet Protocol (also called VoIP or Internet Phone). This article will compare the various services that are offered and provide information to help you decide whether or not this service is appropriate for you. For simplicity's sake, we call this Internet Voice.

The notion is simple, but the subtleties are confounding. You replace your standard wired home telephone line from your local phone company with a service that is carried over your high-speed Internet service provider. If you don't yet have high-speed Internet, you can choose one of the "double-play" or "triple-play" combination bundles -- meaning that telephone service is paired with high-speed Internet and other services, typically at a discount.

 

The potential savings is huge -- most of the Internet voice providers offer unlimited local and long distance calling within North America. Some offer lower-priced plans for unlimited local calls only, and charge per-call for long distance or international calls at pennies per minute.

Who should NOT get Internet voice service

But these services aren't for everyone. If you have young children (say under the age of 5) or if you are in ill health and live alone, you should steer clear of this service because it is less reliable than a standard phone. In case of a power outage, most ordinary phones (but not cordless) can still work over the low-voltage lines that the phone company maintains. All of these Internet voice services require AC wall power to work.

The other issue for emergency use is that ordinary phone lines do a better job of connecting to 911 call centers than Internet voice providers. While most of the providers have made progress in this area, there are still situations where an emergency call doesn't directly go to the closest call center or where your address doesn't automatically display for the dispatcher. That could be just a matter of seconds or minutes in answering your emergency call, something that could make a difference in some emergencies.

If you have multiple devices other than telephones connected to your current phone lines, such as fax machines, home security monitoring panels, and TiVO video recorders, you also might not want to go through the trouble of testing each of these to ensure that they will work with your new Internet voice line. While most of the Internet voice carriers support other things besides straight phones, some don't, and troubleshooting them could be more than you bargained for.

Also, if you have had your local phone number for some time, some of the Internet voice providers can allow you to keep that number, and some can't. It is important to ask up front before getting service, particularly if changing phone numbers is unappealing. It can also take several weeks to perform the transfer, something else to keep in mind. Some of the providers, such as Vonage and Packet8, allow you to check this from their Web sites directly.

Finally, most of the providers require you to sign up for a year of service in advance to obtain free hardware or rebates, just like the cell contracts. If you cancel before your year is up, you have to pay additional fees. If you are planning on moving or not sure whether these services are for you, then consider that as well.

What are some of the benefits of Internet voice?

There are plenty of reasons that might motivate you to switch to Internet voice other than price.

First off are the features. All of the providers offer features that typically you would have to pay extra for with your traditional phone company, such as voice mail, call forwarding, caller ID, last number redial, call waiting, three-way calling, and "find me" multiple simultaneous line rings. Some of the Internet voice providers also offer additional features such as 800-toll free numbers or support for multiple area codes on a single line, so that your family or customers can make local calls to you.

The multiple-line ringing feature deserves some additional explanation, and is one of the most useful ones. Say you run a small business from your home, and have a separate line for your business calls. When you are away from your office, you can set up the Internet phone service to first ring your cell phone, and if that doesn't answer, then ring some other line. Or they can all ring at the same time, which can be interesting. It is a great way to be productive and it doesn't cost anything extra. Remember, if you pick up the call on your cell phone, it is charged against your plan's available minutes.

Second is that the providers let you manage your phone's features from a Web page. You'll never again have to talk to a phone company representative or stay on hold. All of the providers have call logs, the ability to change features (such as turn on do-not-disturb or change call forwarding information) on the fly. That is appealing to some people.

Third, you can take your phone number with you, when you travel or if you have a second home. You'll need high-speed Internet service at your second home, and how your service is configured for 911 identification is important.

Finally, you can appear to be someplace that you aren't by having a local phone number in another city. If you do business elsewhere, or if you have many friends and family in a distant city, you can attach a second or third local phone number to your Internet voice line and let your callers make local calls to you, even though you are elsewhere. All of those "extra" numbers can ring the same phone in your house.

Here you can read more about how to choose the right Internet Service provider and also how to pick Internet voice for your small business.



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