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There are countless benefits available for businesses when they switch to a hosted VoIP phone service.  Price is a big driver that has certainly been delivered by national VoIP providers as well as smaller, regional or local carriers.  However, when choosing a provider, don’t just settle for the price benefit received from providers who merely drop ship the phones with basic configurations for your business.

The beauty behind hosted VoIP phone service is that there can be many programmatic features and custom configuration options for your business, assuming the provider has a robust and flexible platform.  Every business has a flow of how they would like their calls routed and handled, and there are many ways to customize this delivery.  Your first test of a provider’s willingness to customize a call flow is whether they conduct a configuration meeting with you in advance of the delivery of the phones.  If it is merely setting up direct dial numbers for every phone and driving calls to your main number to one individual or to an auto attendant, there is a chance that you’re missing out on options to make the phone service work exactly how you would like it to.

In addition, one very important decision point is who is taking the responsibility for your voice quality.  You should be alerted to potential issues if a selling point from a drop shipper is “just plug the phones into your office LAN and they work.”  Hosted VoIP phones do in fact “work” when you do this, but call quality has not been addressed.  If this is addressed merely by internet bandwidth sizing and capacity, you still may face call quality issues.  Make sure your provider is delivering a new router or edge device for your LAN that has Quality of Service software built in.  This will ensure that your voice packets over the internet are prioritized and are not interrupted by data traffic. 

With careful selection of your VoIP provider based upon their desire and ability to configure your phones and call flow to how you do business and how they address call quality, you will enjoy BOTH economic benefits and the many benefits of the advanced calling features of a VoIP phone system!

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments. 

One of the more frustrating customer service examples comes every month in your business’ phone bill. A common practice among phone provides is to advertise and promote a rate for service, only to tack on surcharges and other “pass through” items as a means to deflect the responsibility for their rates being different. 

This practice is entrenched in the industry, both from the traditional phone service providers as well as the new VoIP phone service entrants in the marketplace.  Items like E911 Service Fee, Regulatory Recovery Fee, Universal Service Fund Surcharge, FCC Fees, and State Telecom Excise Taxes all are nicely tacked onto your bill and easily add 15% to 20% more onto your monthly bill.

At sipVine, we made the decision not to advertise pricing without those surcharges built in.  The only addition you’ll see from us is for local sales taxes.  We wanted our customers to experience satisfaction at all phases of the service, including receiving a simple invoice for service that matches what was promised in our quote.

Additionally, we do not promote pricing adjustments based upon term contracts.  We believe that our customers should receive the best price available and not have to sign a term agreement. 

Contact us to discuss your needs.  Our goal is to deliver a customized configuration at a price that will deliver benefits and be exactly what we proposed! 

About the author:  Mark Greim is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at sipVine, a provider of a variety of digital phone solutions and services. Mark has extensive experience working for start-up or entrepreneurial organizations and a passion for affordable, reliable, and purposeful technology solutions in those environments.   

This is one of the most common questions we receive from our prospective customers.  VoIP calls really do not require much bandwidth at all, and there are adjustments that can be made to condense the requirement even further.

The first mental hurdle to overcome is that your concurrent voice calls are no longer restricted to the number of analog “lines” you have provisioned for your company.  With VoIP, your only restriction is the amount of bandwidth you have.  Even if you are flooded with concurrent calls, many VoIP systems will capture the call and deliver it to your company voicemail, thus your customers will never hear a busy signal.  However, the above scenario makes the question of bandwidth requirements very appropriate.

A single VoIP call requires 80k of bandwidth in a non-compressed environment.  Thus, 10 concurrent calls active on your system would require 800K of bandwidth.  However, it is common practice to utilize voice compression to reduce this requirement. A compression codec will lower the requirement to as little as 25k of bandwidth per call.   Utilizing compression can help conserve bandwidth without a material sacrifice of voice quality, especially if your VoIP provider provides a Quality of Service software with their service.

There are some things you can do to test your company’s readiness for VoIP phone service, however a good VoIP service provider should consult with you prior to your installation on these very topics:

Run a speed test – run a free speed test of your bandwidth.  Record the download and upload speeds, and try again later in the day and repeat every few days.  You’re looking for your download speeds to be robust enough to handle your voice and data volume and for the speed results consistent as well. 

Run an extended ping test – you should ping the potential service provider to check the latency between you and their server.  You’re looking for the result to be under 110 milliseconds at a minimum.   Ideally, a good circuit should produce latency in the 20 milliseconds or less range.  Furthermore, it should be relatively stable.  Results bouncing around (like 20, 20, 150, 90, 20, 20, 150, 20, etc) will produce packet drops and jittery phone calls.

Check for packet loss – a stable internet connection should experience no packet loss. VoIP service is dependent upon a no to very low packet loss.  If packet loss is approaching 2%, contact your internet provider to service the line.

Determine your concurrent call volume – this may be via observation or through an understanding at which point you receive busy signals on your analog system.  If you have five incoming lines, and you or your customers have experienced busy signals, then your concurrent call maximum is greater than five.

Do the math – Maximum concurrent call volume multiplied by 80k must be less than the lower of the upload or download speeds recorded on your speed test.  We usually recommend that the maximum voice call packet transfer doesn’t absorb more than 40-50% of your bandwidth availability.  However, this is entirely dependent upon your data requirements.  Additionally, compressed codec could be deployed before considering more bandwidth.

The amount of bandwidth you have isn't the only variable in delivering quality phone conversations with VoIP.  Many providers "solve" voice quality issues by oversizing bandwidth.  However, there are other, more reliable solutions.   Give sipVine a call today for a consultation.  We're happy to help.

Businesses come in all shapes and sizes.  As you evaluate your alternatives for your business phone service, look for a VoIP provider that can offer a variety of solutions and can customize the configuration to how you do business.  A one size fits all approach forces the business to potentially sacrifice either from an economic standpoint or from a loss of functionality.

Multiple Solutions Allow for the Economic Benefits to be Maximized

It’s too simple to paint every customer the same.  Even sipVine, with our multiple digital phone solutions, does not make blanket assumptions on the right phone solution based upon the size of the customer.  For example, not every large company would automatically be a candidate for our on-site digital phone solution, and they may go with a hosted digital phone service.  Conversely, a medium sized customer may opt for an on-site solution rather than hosted. It’s a matter of aligning the economic goals with the solution.

VoIP providers that only offer a hosted service could ultimately be more costly over time if the customer would better be served with an on-site system powered by Sip Trunks. Some equipment manufacturers may push their on-site platform for a company that would be better served with less capital outlay upfront.  Finally, some VoIP providers don’t even make it an option for the customer to use existing analog equipment. 

At sipVine, we can offer our potential customers a choice between an On-Site Digital Phone Solution with Sip Trunks, a Hosted Digital Phone Service, a Classic Solution that utilizes existing equipment, and some customized hybrids of multiple platforms. All of these various solutions can be evaluated to maximize the economic benefit to our customer.

Customized Configuration Makes your System Work for your Business

VoIP technology has opened up a feature set that was previously only available in expensive corporate phone systems.  Today, a small or start up business can take advantage of powerful communication features without a substantial investment.  Converging voice and data over the same connection allows for unified messaging and other awesome benefits.  Simply put, the power of VoIP applications should not be limited by a one-size fits all, drop ship approach to the business.

Make sure your VoIP provider can customize their feature set to meet or enhance your communication requirements.  They should be able to unleash customized features to both the individual users as well as the business as a whole.

Finally, voice quality should be table stakes in your selection criteria.  A perfectly matched solution for your needs customized to your business is fantastic.  However, if call quality isn’t addressed in the technology, the perfect system really isn’t a viable solution.  To learn more about voice quality in VoIP applications, read my previous blog post on that topic or download our whitepaper, Voice Quality:  The Ultimate Differentiator in VoIP Providers.