Linksys, Allworx, and Astrisk - Digium Voice Over IP Phone System

Some Facts About Voice Over IP

Voice Over IP is the new technology in business telephones today. A Voice Over IP phone system has a lot of great advantages compared to the conventional analog business phone systems.

The first difference is the line buttons on the telephones. In business phone users are use to a

line button lighting when a phone call comes in and staying lit during the duration of the call so users can let another associate know there is a call waiting for them on line one. At that point the person whom the call is trying to reach has to simply press the lit line button and speak with the caller on the other end of the line. Well on a Voice Over IP system the attendant who answers the phone answers the phone uses what is called a heads up display as shown on the hyperlinked picture on the left side of this paragraph. The heads up display is usually a program installed on a computer that shows the status of a phone call. A Operator Attendant cal park a call, or transfer a call directly to an associate by dragging and dropping a phone call on a users telephone through the heads up display on an Asterisk VOIP system.

One thing to note on a Voice Over IP phone system is the line keys do not stay lit on other phones to show the line is in use. Line key only light when the phone is ringing and phone calls have to be handled as explained on the prior paragraph.

An advantage Voice Over IP has is: The phones can be connected on to an existing computer network between the wall jack and an existing computer on an internal computer network. If the computer network is connected to the internet users can take there phones home or to other locations were an internet connection exists and be connected to there business phone system through the internet. Issues can exist in these types of situations as the internet is not powerful enough to support these types of connections as on a general internet connection, at times depending on network traffic there is not enough upload speed. An internet connection uses to types of connections. One is a download and the other is the upload. Usually the download speed is faster than the upload as most of the time internet users are downloading. As a general rule most internet service providers do not provide enough upload speed to support numerous Voice Over IP Connections at one time. You can test your internet connection speed at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ . One way to cure this internet connection upload speed problem is to use costly a T1 line. A T1 line will provide 1.5 Mb down and 1.5 Mb up that will support a Voice Over IP phone system

Another advantage to using Voice Over IP is you can connect two Voice Over IP phone systems on two separate locations using a strong internet connection like a T1 line and transfer calls between locations with extension numbers making it seem like the whole business is under one roof.

Voice Over IP is a good phone system if your business or company has a need for call queuing as most costly call queuing is done through a software program loaded on a computer connected to a phone system. Call queuing is a feature mostly used by technical support companies or departments to handle large numbers of support calls with the smallest technical support crews possible.

Caller ID is a feature that can be manipulated through Voice Over IP service providers as the Caller ID generated by the phone system on outbound calls can be generated from the Voice Over IP phone system.

Other features are: Interactive Voice Response that is the same feature as the Auto Attendant on an analog phone system that handles calls automatically with voice prompts that say if your know your parties extension dial it now. Ring groups is a feature that allows multiple extensions to be reached using only one extension number. For example if an associate wants to reach an other associate in the accounting department he or she can dial the ring group extension umber to ring all of the phones in the accounting department. Conference calling is the next feature we will address that is the same feature as on an analog phone system that is used connect multiple callers either on or off-site into one telephone conversation. Next is voice mail that is also used on analog systems with the exception of unified messaging that utilizes email as an avenue of voice message notification and delivery to a user.

Features are different between Voice Over IP phone system manufacturers.