VoIP for Small Business to the Home Office -itís ready, but are you? Page 3

Page 3
VoIP for Small Business to Home Office -
it’s ready, but are you?
Written by the Tech Edge E-zine staff,
May 1st, 2007

Many of the conveniences features, like taking your office number with you when you're out of the office, haven’t been picked up by the biggest of VoIP services that are popular in the large, medium and small business markets. Most big VoIP service integrators and the direct service providers like AT&T, do offer great desktop device VoIP service – clear, economical and reliable. But, their big company oriented service is just not as flexible as many of the challengers to the tradition of the “big bells”. We'd like to think that market pressure will push them to offer all the features the smaller companies do.

The VoIP challengers to the traditional and familiar analog telephone services offer some very neat connectivity methods that may in many cases mean that the one number you have on your desk can follow you anywhere you can access high speed Internet. Some of the small office to consumer oriented companies we sampled and tested are Vonage®, Skype®, BroadVoice®, SIPnumber®, FreeDigits®, SIPphone®/ Gizmo®, Packet 8® and TelTel®. We hope to test a few more, as each segment of this article continues.

All of these companies base their VoIP service on SIP; some are generically Asterisk, some have modified and improved upon Asterisk and at least one, Skype is totally proprietary. If you have a free Skype account you can call other Skype members, but you can’t receive calls from PSTN phone users, or call them unless you purchase a Skype number and “Call in” and call out “Skype minutes®”. Skype does offer an attractive one-year flat rate North American call out package for just $29.95, but that doesn't include incoming calls.

Hardware makes the calls go round –
Making calls from the many VoIP services can be accomplished with all sorts of hardware; from expensive multi-line desk sets to wireless single line phones. In some cases calls are made via software clients on a Windows, Mac or a Linux computer using just a microphone and speakers or an inexpensive USB phone. Of course the VoIP service has to offer this capability, in which some do and some don’t. If you need this capability, do your research before you sign up.

In our office we have Cisco 7900 series IP phones, 7960G and 7940G to be specific and these are at the mediium-end in cost. But you’ll not find any better IP desk set phones for a small business to a large company. There are many alternatives in this hardware sector depending on your budget and feature needs; just remember to consider after sales support and as the old adage goes - in quality “you get what you pay for.”

With VoIP exploding in business and at home, there is a tidal wave of new hardware. Every imaginable implementation has at least a few brands and types available for you to choose from. In some cases the VoIP service provider has their own branded hardware, has partnered with companies to manufacture certified compliant hardware or there are non certified phone systems that work because they comply with set standards used in SIP services.

In each of our article segments that addresses either Small Business, Small Office, Home Office of Mobile VoIP service markets, we will explore hardware and software that is appropriate for each market sector. There will also be an individual segment just on hardware we tested and reviews by our customary “user peer group” review panel made up of those like you that are likely to use these products and services.