Voice over IP; simply put it is a phone service
that uses a broadband internet connection.
This new technology has some major advantages, but
has some drawbacks.
The advantages are around cost
and flexibility.
VOIP based phone systems are
not tied by local office wiring like in a
conventional phone system. Calls can come into
your Florida based office, and ring at the home
office of your California based employee. That
can can also be routed via the public network out to
an office in Germany for no additional cost.
SIP based
VOIP service tends to be most
flexible. You can obtain SIP trunks
(inbound/outbound service to public phones) can
originate in any country or location. You can
have local phone calls world wide with this service
if you find most of your customers/vendors in a
different area of the world.
Many businesses are using
SIP
TRUNKs to create their own inexpensive digital
PBX units. With
SIP
trunks, your business can have a "local" phone
number in any country or state. If you are
making frequent calls to certain locations, this may
be the best solution for your business.
The draw back for
VOIP based service is the
Quality of Service. Given the use of the
public network, you could experience quality
problems. These issues will not bother most
customers, worse case you might need to place the
call again if the service isn't clear. The
Quality is also based upon the company/user
connection to the network. Low latency
services with high bandwidth would be preferred to
cope with additional network traffic such as
uploads/downloads.
* POTS
Most people are familiar with POTS. Quite
simply it is the analog phone line provide by the
local phone company (LEC) to your home or business.
It is a basic analogy service, many features can be
included such as caller ID, call forwarding, etc.
This type of service still has its place in the
business world. If a company has a major
investment is analog
PBX (Private Branch Exchange) equipment, savings
and features available in newer technologies will
not provide a return on investment. Small
offices might find it less expensive to use POTS to
bring a few phone lines into their business.
Growing businesses and new companies should
consider a digital service to take advantage of the
new flexibility.
* Integrated Service
This service is very common for business users.
It is usually based upon a
T1 line to carry voice channels and data on the
same service. Integrated service dedicates a
portion (number of channels) of your inbound data
connection to voice service. Due to the
dedication of these channels, the data service
bandwidth is reduced by the reserved portion of the
service. There are some companies that are now
offering a dynamic system where phone lines are
reserved only when in use. This is closer to a
VOIP system in such that the data bandwidth is
variable based upon the number of concurrent voice
sessions. Consider a
VOIP system if you have
not invested in Integrated service hardware such as
PBX, etc.
Our technical specialists will work with you to understand
what will solve your business or personal internet/networking expectations and find a solution for District of Columbia.
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