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The
Centrex Internet telephony service; some notes to business users. VOIP – Voice Over IP = Internet telephony.
The
principal benefit offered by the Centrex VOIP service to your business
is not simply to save you money with free or cheap phone calls and a
reduction in the number of BT lines you need, but to allow
you to present your business in a professional way to your customers. You
may be hard pressed, working partly from the office, partly from home and
on the road, but your customers will have a consistent, straightforward
way to reach you – simply by ringing your main business number. VOIP Centrex features are normally only available on top end phone
systems that are expensive to buy and maintain, and big companies pay
ten to twenty pounds per extension per year for them.
To install it you need broadband and a VOIP supplier (that's us hopefully). You need at least one VOIP telephone number and some VOIP phones. These act like extensions on a traditional office phone system. Why
you should consider Internet telephony for your business. VOIP
telephone numbers are now available for all UK area codes, so you
can have a number with the area code of your business location. This is
what your customers expect. ·
Incoming calls.
Customers
calling your number hear a normal ringing tone and pay their normal UK
landline rate. ·
Always be available.
Incoming
calls can be transferred to any extension, but VOIP Centrex offers the
huge advantage that an extension does not have to be physically within
your office, it can be located anywhere that broadband is available. This
is very good news if you have people working from home or you operate
split sites. Neither the caller nor you pay any onward call charges - the
call is transferred free over the Internet – even if the extension is
in another country! A real bonus if you have staff working on site or
directors who sometimes work from a second home. ‘Follow
me’ - if a call is not answered within your set time it can be forwarded
- to your home, your mobile and so on. You can choose to forward certain
extensions, service engineers perhaps, straight to their mobiles without
waiting. (Calls forwarded to VOIP phones are free. Calls forwarded to
landlines or mobiles are charged to you as an outgoing call.) ·
Outgoing calls.
VOIP
phones are just like normal phones - you lift the handset, hear a normal
dial tone, dial and hear a normal ringing tone - and they are available in
a range of styles and costs. There are also small adaptors which convert
standard analogue phones to VOIP
phones. Outgoing calls to other VOIP numbers, including your extensions,
are free because they travel over the internet, but if the call is routed onto
the normal phone or mobile systems you pay, but at very competitive rates. ·
Voice quality.
VOIP
calls do sound a bit different to normal landlines, but that is because
they are better quality! Modern VOIP systems are reliable enough and of
good enough quality for business use. You may wish to keep a fall back
system or phone on a landline in case broadband fails, but our experience
is that broadband is as reliable as electricity, and if either one fails you
are dead in the water anyway. What
does it cost. A
VOIP
telephone number, allowing two simultaneous calls, costs £7 per month for
the full Centrex service. As each VOIP number acts as a two line hunt
group* you really have the equivalent of two lines for £21 per quarter -
a big saving on the BT standing charge. Simply decide how
many calls you need to be active at once and half it to see how many VOIP ‘lines’ you need. * A two line hunt group is two phone lines that respond to the same telephone number, so if one line is busy you can still use the second line to make an outgoing call or to receive another call.
Extensions
do not attract a monthly cost, just the capital cost of the VOIP phones
and/or
adaptors. Adaptors, which convert normal phones into a VOIP phones, cost
typically £40-£50 each and phones cost £60-£150. If you really need to
keep costs down you can use a ‘soft phone’ (a computer program), which
is available free. Our
VOIP call rates are excellent – 1.2p per minute to UK landlines during
office hours and 12p per minute to mobiles. International rates of 1.5p
per minute to 35 overseas destinations are hard to argue with either. Of
course VOIP to VOIP calls are always free, which means that all calls
between extensions are free – even if the extensions are geographically
separate - and calls to other VOIP telephone numbers are free. With more
and more businesses moving to VOIP its easy to see how your call costs
will keep falling.
Try
it. There
is no longer any reason to put off using internet telephony for your
business – you can reduce the number of telephone lines you rent, pay
lower call charges and present a totally professional image to the outside
world. There is a lot more that can be said but why not sign
up for a free 3 month trial and see for yourself - £10 of call credit
is the extent of your risk!
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FAQ
- frequently asked questions. - Why should I pay for a service I can get free with Skype? - We use Skype, but not as a business tool. None of the free services provide all the important features a business needs - standard phone numbers, easy transfers between extensions and 'follow me', for starters.
- Can I transfer my existing number to VOIP? - Not usually. You may wish to hedge your bets initially and keep your well known business number on the normal phone system and migrate slowly to VOIP. Or go for it, cancel the lines and number, chuck out the old PABX and ask BT to provide a recorded message saying 'the number you are calling has changed...'. It all depends on how brave you feel.
- What about my fax, lots of customers send in orders by fax? - Same answer as above really. There is nothing to stop you putting a fax on a VOIP number but faxes can't hear recorded messages saying the number has changed. So we kept our fax number and BT line, provisioned that line with broadband and connected both the fax and router to it - its easy, just plug them both into the splitter - and got rid of most of the other BT lines.
- Will VOIP phones work if the power fails? - No. But neither will your broadband or computers.
- What if broadband fails? - VOIP needs an internet connection, but so do many of the activities of a modern office, email, web site maintenance and so on. For prudence sake its probably worth keeping a phone and fax on a normal line.
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