So here is a short primer on business VoIP technology, its place in the current marketplace, and how to buy VoIP and save money.

VoIP technology and money savings essentially go hand-in-hand (assuming you do it right and have a fundamental knowledge of the components) the basic premise of saving money with VoIP technology is we're going to take our dial-tone, local and long-distance services and put them on our Internet pipe.

We then get to "fire the phone company" and their expensive phone lines or T1s, PRIs, etc., so that's where the savings part comes in. Essentially we are leveraging an existing (or new) high-quality broadband Internet connection and dropping the old copper line voice services.

A couple of important things to know here are:

• What kind of business VoIP technology should I be using?

• What type of equipment am I going to need to do business VoIP?


• Will business VoIP technology really save me money?

• What are the main differences between making phone calls with VoIP technology and the way I'm doing it now?

• Are there service providers they can just do all this VoIP stuff for me?

- Basically to continue using our same old phone system (assuming that's not an IP ready system) and allowing the local phone service provider to implement our VoIP technology for us.

The way this works is using dynamic bandwidth allocation on a high-quality T1 or similar circuit, whereby the local phone service provider is doing the business VoIP for you so you don't have to worry it.

This is known as packaged or integrated services, and is a very popular way to leverage the cost savings of business VoIP without the upfront cost of having to buy a new phone system or a bunch of IP handsets.

Plan B

Our second option, especially attractive if you have an end-of-life phone system, a new business where you haven't yet purchased your phone system or perhaps adding additional branches in an expansion mode, you will have options of buying an IP or VoIP ready system.

These come in many permutations. We have premise based phone systems, or you might use a Hosted Phone System or even a Virtual Office Phone Systems click on the links shown here to be taken to articles written by a VoIP expert that does a great job of explaining these options.

So we're going to be either using a premise based IP PBX system whereby we will be purchasing SIP Trunks or we may be doing hosted PBX, where we are purchasing only the handsets.  In any event we will need a quality Internet pipe that hopefully will be provided and fully managed by the Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP).

One thing's for sure, when we are doing voice over IP we want the "one throat to choke" model by assuring the VoIP and the Internet transport i.e.: T1 internet,  or maybe Ethernet or whatever type dedicated internet pipe is provided by one provider if at all possible.

Doing VoIP in any other way, where we Bring Our Own Bandwidth (BYOB) puts your business at risk for poor quality of service, dropped calls, echo and all sorts of challenges in trying to assure a our business VoIP phone service is of high quality.

To address potential quality of service issues, we may have to spend a little more for a quality broadband Internet connection, but in the long run it will be worth it to make sure that our VoIP sounds good.

OK! We know now that VoIP technology can save businesses some money, generally the more phone lines or the more business locations that you have, the more likely we are to save progressively larger dollars with the migration to voice over IP.

Part of the challenge is making sure you understand which VoIP technology is best for your business, I can help you with this. Just give me a call for a free 30 minute consultation at 877-566-5600.

I'll be glad to help you understand how what you have now can be turned into a high-quality business VoIP service with the lowest possible cost,  saving you money in the process.

Or simply take my Telecom survey, and I'll send you what you need  click here

Curt Burnside
"The Telecom Broker"