By Dan Baldwin
In today's economy, many Southern California based multi-location business owners and decision makers find themselves either trying to expand without a lot of cash or trying to downsize to save more cash. Whether due to expansion of contraction though, every monthly overhead item gets a thorough "scrubbing" especially nettlesome invoices like business phone line bills, broadband cable Internet bills and the like.
When looking at separate phone line & Internet bills, many business owners ask, "What happened to making phone calls over the Internet? Why am I paying separately for business phone lines and business Internet service? Can't I get rid of my phone lines?"
You Can Cancel Your Business Phone Lines to Save Money ...
If you look at your normal business phone service bill from the telephone company you'll see that you're paying for three separate services:
1. Phone calls, 2. Phone numbers, and 3. Phone lines.
Those of you who have already tried VoIP phone calling at home using Vonage, Skype, magicJack or some similar residential grade "alternate phone service" know that you can easily substitute your phone line with a broadband Internet connection. Phone numbers and phone calls do not have to go over phone lines as they're "transport medium agnostic."
If you pick apart your business phone service invoice from your local phone company you'll see that the "phone line" part makes up the majority of the costs. You're paying for the "phone line pipes" all the time whether they're being used for phone calls or not.
The actual phone call usage portion of most phone bills and the hidden cost to "rent the phone number" for the month are really very small. This can be plainly seen on successive phone bills when a month of heavy calling is about the same as a month with very few calls.
When it comes to your classic phone company phone bill - you're "paying for the pipes". This alone is not bad except you're also paying separately for your broadband Internet connection. It's time to "double up" and dump the cost of your phone lines if you can swing it.
Is it Hard, Legal (or Safe) to Connect My Phone System to My Business Cable Internet?
No, it's not hard. Yes, it's legal (confirm this with your cable company). Yes, it's safe - if you do it with a business "SIP Trunking" provider that has turned this new business phone service practice into an art form.
If you've connected a magicJack at home you already know how "hard" the connection process is. Instead of plugging your home phone into the phone line jack on the wall you plug it into the magicJack device and then plug the magicJack device into a USB port on your computer. The software on the magicJack device then connects your regular home phone to "real dial tone" using the Internet connection plugged into your computer.
After about a minute after connecting the magicJack you pick up the receiver on your phone and make a normal phone call. Incoming calls make the phone ring just like before.
Now of course magicJack is only residential quality so you don't want to use it for businesses calls. It actually works fine for business calls (I used my magicJack for business calls for about a month) until someone uses the Internet connection to watch a Netflix movie or swap vacation photos with friends on Facebook.
Business Grade "Black Boxes" Easily Allow Businesses to Make VoIP Calls Over Cable Internet Connections Using Older Phone Systems
The secret to both savings and happiness is the "black box" that connects your business cable Internet connection to your existing phone system and the "SIP Trunk" business phone service vendor that installs, sets up and maintains the black box for you.
In the residential magicJack example above, the magicJack device makes no attempt to keep a Netflix movie download from clobbering an existing voice phone call. As well, the magicJack service does not allow one to keep their existing phone number - a show stopper for any business.
A high quality business grade SIP trunk services provider though can "port over" a businesses existing phone numbers, provide low cost billing for the incoming and outgoing phone calls, make sure that the phone service works on the existing phone system that the business already has in place AND make sure that other "non voice" users of the business Internet connection don't mess up the call quality of an ongoing phone call.
"SIP Trunk Phone Service" Works Well for Single-Location Businesses and Even Better for Multi-Location Businesses
When a multi-location business owner or phone system manager finally realizes that he or she can separate their phone numbers from their phone lines using SIP trunking phone service, they become overjoyed because they can start managing one "big phone system" instead of multiple, separate phone systems.
Suddenly, phone numbers that could only be answered in one location can suddenly be answered anywhere on the planet that the phone system manager designates and authorizes. "SIP enabled phones" (using the SIP service and the vendor provided black boxes) make multiple old phone systems work together as one and even pull in "work at home" employees using their home phones on a residential cable connection.
SIP Trunking Allows Businesses to Migrate to VoIP on Their Own Schedule (But Get Most of the Benefits Right Now)
While getting several more years of productive use out of an old analogue PBX phone system is great for cash-strapped growing (or downsizing) businesses, most business owners and decision makers will eventually want to migrate their old analogue phone systems to "pure IP" phone systems over time so they can eliminate the "black boxes" and enjoy 100% of the features and benefits that business VoIP phone systems allow.
But whether business owners choose to migrate to upgraded "pure SIP" business phone systems now, later or never, SIP trunks give the business owners the options they want today at a price that preserves their precious cash for needed expansion or contraction.
What Do You Need to Do to Determine Your "Get-Rid-of-My-Phone-Lines" Options?
Call us!
Over the past several years we've successfully worked with multiple SIP trunk phone service providers on behalf of our business phone clients. We'll be able to share with you the pros and cons of all the different SIP trunk service providers.
While some phone consultants will suggest that SIP trunks and their associated providers are all a "commodity" allowing the selection of the lowest price, nothing could be further from the truth.
While the "ones and zeros" of a SIP enabled digital phone call racing over a single leg of a phone call are indeed "digital ones and zeros", the audio quality of the SIP enabled call will be terrific or terrible based on how badly the ones and zeros get knocked around between the phone call sender and the phone call receiver.
Who's Bringing What to the "SIP Phone Call Table"?
Your selection of a SIP trunk phone service vendor can really only be made after a reasonably thorough evaluation of your broadband Internet connection, your existing business phone system, your existing local area network (LAN) wiring and the expertise of the "black box" SIP trunking providers you have access to.
The more "SIP stuff" you bring to the table (on your own or with us), the less "SIP magic" you need to buy from a SIP vendor. On the other hand, if you want just "one throat to choke" when it comes to delivering on the promise of both savings and quality, you'll need to by more "SIP magic" from just one highly recommended SIP vendor.
That's when working with an experienced telecom agency like us really pays off.
We're experienced at picking, installing and managing business "SIP happiness".
Give us a call.
One SIP Trunk Provider We've Just Met But Really Like
All of the SIP trunk vendors we work with provide quality service but one we've just recently met really stands out because of their long and experienced track record of providing everything a happy SIP customer would need:
BandTel We like BandTel because instead of insisting that a single or multi-location customer order a separate broadband circuit just for their phone service "to guarantee quality", they've made a business of providing business phone customers with exactly what they want - high quality business phone service over an existing business grade Internet connection like cable using the customer's existing phone system.
Many SIP trunking providers do a fine job of providing or porting your DID (direct inward dial) phone numbers and connecting your calls but they want nothing to do with guaranteeing quality of service ("QoS") if you want to use your own broadband Internet connection or existing phone system.
BandTel's not like that. They expect that's why most business customers are looking at SIP or VoIP phone service in the first place and have engineered all their systems to accomodate just that - doing whatever can and should be done to guarantee the highest quality phone call possible.
How Will This Work for Your Business?
Looking for a Southern California based, vendor neutral business communications technology service expert that can help you out with your multi-location telecom or data network problems?
Click here to learn about how we might be able to fix your problem for free, then contact me directly at 951-251-5155 or [email protected].
BaldwinTel helps multi-location businesses across the United States but specializes Southern California especially San Diego County, Orange County, Los Angeles County, Riverside County and San Bernardino County.
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