More than ever, business administrators are seeking to reduce expenses and mitigate risks. VoIP telephony tops the list of cost reduction strategies, and rightfully it should. Voice over IP has been proven to assist the small to medium business market in eliminating nearly 80% of their communications expenses, while radically lessening the costs spent on on-going disposable materials . No other development has been able to offer such promising gains.

Voice over IP, as a form of IP telephony, reinforces the extensibility of the Internet and transforms it into a unified communications platform. The concept of voice over IP is straightforward, analog voice signals are converted to digitalized data packets and then transported along the Internet network. Once they reach their intended destination they are then converted back into an analog signal.

By using the Internet as a ‘phone line’ business are able to take complete advantage of the low cost of network usage and, if desired, abandon costly traditional packet switch telephony altogether. Unlike services offered by common telephony providers, Voice over IP is an all encompassing solution. Services and features are not provided on a cost per-minute or cost-per-feature format but rather as a complete and comprehensive collection of business enhancing essentials.

IP telephony offers many of the same tried and tested products that the telephone company has provided for decades; call waiting, call forwarding, voice mail and extension dialing. It also affords users with a set of uniquely engineered and highly advanced features, such as; automated attendants, Internet Fax, enhanced hold music, local area codes, and call monitoring.

By deploying a small business voice over IP solution as part of their existing cost reduction strategy, businesses unwittingly eliminate the need for dedicated phone lines for functions such as faxing, they utilize their existing network to it’s full potential by using it to carry out both voice and data communications. Cost associated with mobile usage is drastically reduced. Also eliminated is the need to keep a highly skilled team of support professionals on payroll, as a large part of voice over IP repair and maintenance can be done off-site, virtually by the hosted solutions provider.