In simpler technology times you didn’t have many options for phone systems. You had a large service provider with copper analog lines sent to your building with physical connections. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or you just don’t pay attention to phone services… you may have missed a few upgrades in the phone world. Back in 1995 a company called VocalTec created internet phones for the masses! This is what we most commonly hear VoIP or Voice Over IP to be.
What you want to know is how this can help your business save money, have nicer phone devices with easy to navigate buttons, and create a better office phone setup in general. But the answer is not that simple, in this article we will take you through the pros and cons of several types of phone systems as well as give you options that will be best for your company.
So, there might be a few reasons that you want to change your phone system. Sometimes you may not need to change it at all. If all the features in your phone system are fine your phones are working well, and you’re mostly working in the office, you don’t really need to change systems. If you’re looking to save some money on telecom costs. It’s important to know that in most older phone systems there’s ways to connect those to VoIP phone lines. This can save you money if you’re not looking at extra features. It’s good to know up front that you may not need to make that major investment. If you’re phone systems failing you or you need to add extensions and your current phone system doesn’t support any more extensions or you’re looking for some features like voice mail to email or the ability to have extensions working from home. Those might be some indicators that you should look to upgrading.
If you currently have a phone system and you’re looking to add a few extensions. It all will depend on the system that you have now. For example, if you have a Nevaeh phone system, you’ll need to go to a Nevaeh reseller. Your current phone system will have to have enough free ports on it. They have quite a few different models to choose from. Its good to make sure they are all compatible with the current phone and the model. These compatibility issues can be a barrier when expanding your current system. If its all compatible and you just need a few more extensions. It’s a much cheaper way to go to expand a current phone system than changing devices completely. If you have more of a hosted PBX or an agnostic type phone system such as 3CX or Trixbox Pro, those systems you’re able to buy phones from Yealink, Polycom or Cisco and quite a few other vendors and all of your phones don’t need to be the same model or from the same vendor for the system to work seamlessly.
These days everybody talks about VoIP phone systems. It’s important to know that there’s two halves of this story. Its effectively voice calls over Internet Protocol. Internet Protocol is what your computer uses to surf the Internet download an email. It builds the voice platform on top of that. These systems can be confusing because sometimes they can have a VoIP connected to the network inside of your office and that phone system also connects to traditional Bell phone lines. You can also have the reverse of that. There can be an old Nortel system which is not a voice phone system with voice over IP phone lines, so you don’t have a Bell bill. It will save you money and go to a voice over IP provider and those lines are delivered to your phone system even though your phone systems not VoIP. Creating a complete voice system is then marrying those two inside of your office you have a VoIP phone system and you’re connecting to voice phone lines so you’re completely voice over IP for end-to-end for your phone system.
Phone systems are complicated to setup and make sure they work properly for your office needs. Getting the right services provider is important. You can find more information on phone systems by checking our playlist. You can also watch the video above the highlights the important key facts to remember from this article. If you found any of this helpful feel free to subscribe to our YouTube Channel or follows on social media channels.