3 steps to make low priced calls with VOIP Business Phone

If your company spends a lot on long distance calls to distant contacts and both the contacting parties have a fast speed internet connection, then you can send your voice calls via VOIP along with your data communications.

Here are the steps to making low priced calls:

1. The first step of using IP business phones is buying a trunk i.e. a voice and data connection that's big enough to handle both your voice telephony and data traffic. It is usually a dynamic T1 line which automatically allocates the required bandwidth to telephony as per the demand.

2. Once connected with a T1 voice and data pipe, you have to decide “What sort of VoIP PBX (private branch exchange) is right for your business, and where it should reside”. This decision is completely based on the size of your company and the budget you can afford.

• You can choose the On-premise PBX VOIP if your user base is more than 100. Some businesses that are in need of advanced calling features prefer to own their VoIP PBX and house it on-site rather than paying the additional amount for each new feature added. An on-premise PBX gives you more administrative control over the system. You need to have dedicated IT personnel to handle the system and make changes to it. The noticeable disadvantage of owning your VOIP PBX is that when your business outgrows it, you will have to buy more hardware to fulfill the demands.

• You can go for the Hosted PBX VOIP solution if your company has about 50 to 100 users. And, you want a low-priced system that resides on 3rd party premises so that you don’t have the trouble of managing and upgrading the system. If you are just interested in using the system and not in the settings part, hosted PBX is the best option.

3. Moreover, decisions for the type of business phone system should also involve TCO i.e. total cost of ownership. No matter which you choose from on-premises or hosted PBX; you should be ready to pay some combination of up-front costs (equipment, networking, and setup charges), monthly costs (service and out-of-network long-distance charges) or yearly costs (training and support). Steps to calculate TCO:

• Add together all the costs you have to pay for the length of the contract that you tie up with your provider.

• Divide the total of last calculation you did by the number of months in the contract, and then by the number of employees in your small business.

• Once you have that number, compare it with the amount you now pay for voice and data services per employee every month by subtracting (Current Amount paid – Newly calculated value)

• If your result is a positive value, switching to VoIP telephony might be a good move for you. Just take the time to do your research, pick the type of solution that best fits your business, and make sure that the numbers add to your savings as a whole.

Apart from making calls at a low price, the IP based T1 pipe that has been allocated to you has another set of favors. For one thing, your company can use "unified messaging," which lets you receive and manage your voice mail as a text message along with an attached mp3 file in the same place you get your e-mails. You can also use "presence" features to check whether your recipient is available, on-line and ready for chats or is away from his desk.