Introduction
Commercial VoIP services offer high quality and feature-rich phone service at a lower rate than traditional phone service. Commercial VoIP is also referred as Business VoIP or Corporate VoIP. The most important reason of many businesses is switching from a traditional phone system to VoIP system, is the bandwidth efficiency and low costs that VoIP system can provide.
You don't have to be computer or technical savvy to use VoIP at the office. If the office has LAN system, then all the internal office calls will be free. Commercial VoIP treats all calls within an organization as local calls, even if made from different countries. A commercial VoIP service falls into two main category –
• IP-PBX – It is an abbreviation for Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchange. It is a business telephone system which is designed to interoperate with the PSTN and to send or receive multimedia data over an IP network. IP-PBX is a simplified version of an analog based or traditional PBX system. It provides same function of traditional PBX system, the only difference is that it uses an internet connection rather than phone lines.
Benefits of IP-PBX system are –
• High-level security.
• Excellent sound quality.
• Enterprise level functionality.
• Ability to add features like conferencing, voicemail, Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) etc.
• Hosted PBX – In hosted PBX VoIP service, calls are routed from PBX to VoIP phones via internet connection without any equipment at your office. This service is cost-effective, since calls are coming via internet connection. Hosted PBX offers same benefits as IP-PBX.
Few more benefits of Hosted PBX are –
• Portability.
• Cost savings.
• No maintenance charges for equipment.
• Enhanced security features.
Installing VoIP in a small and medium business does not simply replace the traditional phone system, but also add much more quality, fluidity, prestige and features in the organization. Small business VoIP systems include the facility to distribute toll-free numbers to selected customers, to allow customers access to an internal company directory and to allocate special numbers to certain customers so that they avoid long-distance charges when contacting you.
Security
Security in the Commercial VoIP telephone system is required, since VoIP system uses the intranet networks and the internet for transmission of the voice data packets from one end to other end. Commercial VoIP phone systems can be password protected, which prevents unauthorized access to the phone. Internal security against packet sniffers can be improved with higher security firewall systems.