How to Switch to VoIP Phone Service

26 September 2007

If small businesses are anything, they're cost conscious. And many are looking to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to help lower the monthly phone bill, often a big expense.

Switching to VoIP can be especially worthwhile if your company spends a lot on long-distance calls to far-flung employees, partners, and contacts. If you're already connected to some of these people via a local or wide area network (LAN/WAN), you might as well be making phone calls to them over the pipe that you're already paying for.

Sending your voice calls through an IP pipe along with your data communications has another set of beneficial side effects. For one thing, your company can use "unified messaging," which lets you manage your voice mail and e-mail in the same place. You can also employ so-called "presence" features to see the status--on cell, busy, and so on--of coworkers and contacts.