By Dan Baldwin
To help educate our Southern Californai based clients, prospects and multi-location business partners "who does what best" we're hosting a series of "Vendor Shootouts" on our blog where we have different leading industry vendors share why their specific solution is better than their competitor's solution in a specific customer solution category.
The current shootout category? BYOB or "Bring Your Own Broadband" Hosted VoIP - the Internet phone system for busiesses that connects calls over the public Internet.
Why Small Businesses Love BYOB Hosted VoIP...
By and large, small and medium sized businesses are still run by their entrepreneurial founders who think every technology service, especially business phone systems, ought to be able to be delivered for less money over whatever Internet connection they already have.
Business owners say, "If I can get decent VoIP phone service at home or on my cell phone with practically any Internet connection, why won't that work in my small business office?"
This is a reasonable question. The answer is, "A VoIP business phone system that uses the public Interent CAN work but there's NO GUARANTEES that the audio quality will be good enough."
With this caveat given, many business customers say NO WAY and then start looking at the higher quality "direct connect" of MPLS versions of VoIP business phone service. Other business owners though say, "Let's try BYOB VoIP first and then we'll upgrade if it's not good enough."
The trick to making BYOB hosted VoIP work is to try BYOB hosted VoIP with a business phone service provider that embraces BYOB with more than just lip service. Broadview Networks, based in New York but serving the entire country, is one of these providers that do "all flavors" of hosted VoIP including "direct connect" (with a DIA or dedicated Internet access connection) as well at MPLS.
We Sell and Recommend Broadview's BYOB Hosted VoIP
This is not to say that Broadview's BYOB VoIP or any vendor's BYOB VoIP will work for you. Before choosing or trialing any business phone system you really need to spend some quality time reviewing your entire phone system or "unified communications" vision with a qualified independent telecom agency (like us).
Ther are lots of pros and cons to any VoIP or BYOB phone system solution. If it seems like an investigation of the pros and cons of BYOB suggest a trial is right for your company, we're happy to bring in Broadview Networks. to get to know Broadview a little better please review the information below from the "BYOB Hosted VoIP" shootout below that we hosted.
Questions? Give us a call!
Why 50,000 SMB's Choose Broadview Networks' Unique Hosted VoIP solutions
Broadview Networks was founded in 1996. They have business customers in 47 states and Washington DC that generate $450m in annual revenue using 1,100 employees. Broadview provides business phone systems, local phone service, wide area data networks, broadband Internet and other managed services.
Broadview's "Best in Class" invoice earns rave reviews from multi-location business customers needing their business phone bills formatted in unique ways with specialized reporting capabilities.
With over 60 dedicated channel managers supporting their sales partners including independent telecom agents, channel partners, IT consultants and business phone systems equipment VARs, both Broadview's business customers and sales partners are well taken care of.
Eight Ways that Broadview's Hosted VoIP Service Offering is Unique
There are hundreds of hosted VoIP business service providers in the marketplace today but Broadview claims at least six unique points of value including:
- Code Ownership - Broadview does not need to buy licenses from anyone else like Broadsoft because Broadview owns their own hosted VoIP code. This means that Broadview controls their own phone system "roadmap" as well as service upgrade roll-outs. This means that Broadview's channel sales partners are not competing with every Broadsoft-clone reseller on the street who all basically have the same product with just a different logo.
- End-User and Administrator Portal is Easy to Use - The hosted VoIP phone user and administrator portal often "makes or breaks" user acceptance of the phone system. Soft savings from upgraded phone applications can't be achieved if users aren't using them.
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Business-Grade Call Quailty - While BYOB call quality is only "best effort" because the time the phone call spends on the public Internet, with a large percentage of Broadview's 50,000 hosted VoIP seats being provisioned as BYOB, Broadview has earned the experience to make BYOB all that it's possible to be.
To maximize BYOB call quility for their customers, Broadview conducts a site survey to measure Internet bandwidth capacity and conducts a comprehensive voice/data ratio analysis.
Continue reading "Business Phone Systems Review: Broadview Networks' "BYOB" Hosted VoIP Solution" »
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