Internet telephony is also known as Broadband phone, IP Telephony and Voice over Broadband, but is most commonly referred to as VoIP.
For businesses it can be a very attractive propsition as the cost savings in using VoIP can be significant when compared with traditional telephony. In order to appreciate just how significant those savings can be, you might be well advised to check out a
VoIP comparison site.
VoIP to VoIP phone calls may even be free with many
VoIP providers, but most will charge a nominal fee for VoIP to
PSTN (traditional telephony) lines. Be sure to check the
prices of the various providers before you select one.
Selecting a provider, especially for a business rollout of VoIP, is something that is quite important. Internet telephony is not yet perfect so make sure you know about the price, customer service and line quality of the VoIP package that you select. Some of the bigger players worth checking out are
1TouchTone and
Sun Rocket. Check out some reviews of those companies
here and
here.
Internet telephony can be a godsend for cost conscious small businesses as long as a little bit of research is done first.
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Sun Rocket, for instance is a VoIP service provider like Vonage, a residential service. 1TouchTone does have a Business Class VoIP service however. The nPBX as they call it. A hosted PBX to leverage IP Phones(see http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=IP+phone&i=45365,00.asp)
With the proper adapters regular pstn phones will do work, but this is only recommended for the very small business. A hosted PBX or a IP PBX will both do the trick for a small business or medium size business, most likely with at least a T1 Internet connection. This will give you the BUSINESS class features, IE auto attendant, proper allocation to prioritize unused bandwidth.
It is very important to understand that VoIP is only as good as the internet connection at the business. If you had a low grade dsl connection and a need to support 2 concurrent phone calls while surfing the need, there would be a huge issue.
Now some time for a plug(who would of guessed)
Race Technolgies
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~Mike