What is VOIP?

And What Can It Do For Me?
VOIP is an acronym for Voice Over IP, or in more common terms phone service over the Internet. If you have a reasonable quality Internet connection you can communicate through your Internet connection instead of through your local phone company. What can a PBX with VOIP do for me?

A PBX with VOIP capability can offer increased functionality in three ways:
  1. Multi-location – A business with two or more locations anywhere in the world can use VOIP to communicate with each other freely over the Internet. The PBXs in the different locations act as one central PBX where everyone is just an extension away. Calls can be seamlessly transferred from one office to another with no toll charges. Conference calls between offices are easy and free.
  2. VOIP Service Providers – Business now have the choice of having telephone lines from their traditional telephone company, a VOIP service provider, or both. In general phone service via VOIP costs less than equivalent service from traditional sources. This is largely a function of traditional phone services either being monopolies or government entities. There are also some cost savings due to using a single connection to the Internet to carry both voice and data. This is especially true when users have existing under-utilized network capacity that they can use for VOIP without any additional costs. In the most extreme case, users see VOIP phone calls (even international) as FREE. While there is a cost for their Internet service, using VOIP over this service may not involve any extra charges, so the users view the calls as free. There are a number of services that have sprung up to facilitate this type of "free" VOIP call.
  3. Tele-commuters – VOIP gives you the ability to VOIP compatible phone in a remote location to your PBX with VOIP. For example a person working from home with a reliable Internet connection can use a VOIP compatible phone to connect to the office PBX and be a part of the office phone system. In the past one might simply forward calls to a home phone, but this did not give tele-commuters access to all of the features of the office PBX like voice mail, etc. Now a PBX with VOIP can treat a remote VOIP compatible phone as an integrated part of the phone system. The dial tone on the remote phone comes from the office PBX. All calls are routed through the office PBX.

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