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Hosted VoIP Solutions: 5 Benefits of Hosted Telephony

February 24, 2020 - by Jack Mitchell

There has been a great deal of coverage concerning BT switching off PSTN and ISDN. However, a lot of businesses still aren’t aware of the switch off. Also, some businesses are unaware that the switch off means they must move over to a cloud-based VoIP telephone system. In this blog post, we will clarify what a hosted VoIP solution is and why you should embrace cloud telephony now.

What is a hosted VoIP solution? A hosted VoIP solution is a business telephone system hosted in the cloud by a VoIP provider. A hosted VoIP solution uses packet-switched telephony to transmit calls over the internet.

Hosted VoIP: What Is It?

In basic terms, a hosted VoIP platform is a cloud-based telephone system that you will use to make calls over the internet. Instead of having any telephone system hardware in your office as you’d have with a traditional setup, your system is actually entirely in the cloud. Your service provider hosts your phone system in a private data centre and maintains it for you.

For bigger operations, you might have an on-premises VoIP telephone system. This is where you have your own servers onsite and maintain your own VoIP system. With hosted VoIP, you have a VoIP provider that looks after your system in private data centres. With the power of broadband, you’ll be able to access your telephone system and use its full functionality without any hardware in your office.

A Polycom VVX 411 IP desk phone. IP phones can be used with a hosted VoIP telephone system and will replace your existing office phones. 

If you currently have an analogue phone system, phones are connected to each other via a PSTN system. Analogue phones use electrical signals to generate audio. With hosted VoIP, communication works differently. Voice data is carried over the internet as data packets. The data packets travel to the private data centre where your system is hosted. From there, the voice data travels to the recipient’s telephone system. If the recipient isn’t using VoIP, the data packets are converted in the cloud before travelling to the receiver’s system.

Hosted VoIP: Key Features

One of the reasons that hosted VoIP is so good is the multitude of features available that you can’t use with a traditional telephone system. For many businesses, such as call centres, these features are essential and aid productivity.

  • Auto attendant
  • Conference Calls
  • Call Analytics
  • HD Call Quality
  • Voicemail to Email
  • Mobile/Desktop App

These are just a few of the hosted VoIP features that your business could enjoy.

Hosted VoIP features include a desktop/mobile app that enables full PBX capabilities through a mobile phone, computer, or other internet-enabled device.

Hosted VoIP Solutions: 5 Benefits of Hosted Telephony

Hosted VoIP solutions are flexible and low-maintenance, as well as future-proof. An unreliable phone system can be very expensive, but you can’t go wrong with hosted VoIP; it’s a solution that can mould to any business.

Here are 5 key benefits of hosted telephony:

  • Scalable
  • Inexpensive
  • Reliable
  • Enhanced Call Management
  • Free Updates Forever

Hosted VoIP is a low-cost solution with plenty of benefits, from unparalleled scalability to unrivalled reliability. Here’s some further insight into the 5 benefits that we’ve listed above.

Scalable

A traditional telephone system factually doesn’t scale with your business easily. Want to add a new line or make changes to your telephone system? Even the smallest of changes can take weeks, and you can guarantee that any changes come with big expense.

Adding lines to and modifying hosted VoIP solutions is completely different: Adding new lines to your system requires a simple modification in the cloud portal. You can make changes easily, quickly and at no cost through an uncomplicated interface. No telephony experience? You can modify your telephone system irrespective of your experience with a little training.

You can scale your VoIP system up and down at any time, with a few modifications on a portal. Complete flexibility makes hosted VoIP the greatest telephony solution available.

Inexpensive

The upfront and ongoing costs of a hosted telephone system are cheaper than the costs of creating and maintaining a traditional system. VoIP pricing is completely transparent, so you know exactly what you’ll pay every month. This makes budgeting for the cost of your telephone system easy.

The provider of your cloud hosted telephone system owns the hardware and infrastructure that keeps your system online. There is no hardware on your premises, other than the IP handsets that allow you to make and receive calls. This means the upfront investment is small, as you simply pay for handset installation. Your monthly bill is made up of licences (AKA phone lines) and advanced features such as recording backup.

With VoIP, you only pay for what you need. There’s no need to invest in on-site hardware that you don’t make the most of. You simply have handsets and licences that you pay for monthly. Licences are much cheaper than traditional phone lines. You’ll pay less for VoIP licences than you’re paying for your phone line.

A lot of businesses cannot afford to make a big upfront investment in hardware. With VoIP, you pay nothing upfront. You pay a fixed monthly bill that never changes, unless you need more handsets or licences throughout your contract.

Reliable

As we stated at the beginning of this post, BT are switching off PSTN and ISDN. Going forward, their full focus will be digital services such as VoIP. Cloud hosted telephone systems are improving, with all providers growing their infrastructure and enhancing the solution they offer. According to a recent survey, 75% of participants were either very satisfied or satisfied with their current hosted VoIP solution. This percentage is set to rise as providers make constant improvements at no extra charge to users.

Despite many satisfied businesses, other research shows that businesses delay switching to hosted telephony because of reliability concerns. Fortunately, reliability concerns are completely unsubstantiated. Providers have been working for years to enhance their VoIP offerings, and VoIP is far more reliable than PSTN in 2020.

VoIP does depend on an internet connection. However, minimising the risk of a telephone system dependent on an internet connection is easier than ever. As BT rolls out fibre connectivity to the entire country, reliability only increases. In fact, fibre cabling is much more reliable than copper lines, which are increasingly vulnerable to damage and complete failure.

It’s easy to differentiate between a poor VoIP provider and a reliable one. Good VoIP providers offer SLAs, guaranteed uptime and 24/7 support. All businesses want a guarantee when it comes to quality of service, which you’ll get with a good VoIP provider.

Enhanced Call Management

A cloud hosted VoIP telephone system comes with a massive number of call management features. VoIP will enhance your business’s communication capabilities and increase the productivity and efficiency of your operation.

Here’s a small selection of call management features available at no additional cost:

  • Call Forwarding
  • Call Queue Groups
  • Call Recording
  • Call Transfer
  • Hunt Groups
  • Schedules
  • Remote Office

These features are incredibly useful to all businesses. Some features, such as remote office, offer the flexibility that modern businesses need. Features such as call forwarding can become part of your business continuity plan. If your internet goes down, you can forward all calls to mobile devices or voicemail, ensuring you don’t miss important calls and communication.

To read more about VoIP call management features, please visit our dedicated page. We explain all the above features in greater detail, so please take a look. 

Free Updates Forever

VoIP providers constantly upgrade their infrastructure and enhance their VoIP solutions with updates. However, you won’t have to pay for these updates; they will be available to all customers who have the provider’s VoIP solution.

Updating a traditional telephone system can incur significant cost. When you consider engineer visits and the need to purchase new hardware, your business will end up spending a fortune. Providers host VoIP telephone systems in the cloud, so users have no onsite infrastructure. When providers update their infrastructure, there is no cost to users.

VoIP is future proof, which is the key reason to move over to a telephone system hosted in the cloud. The traditional telephone network is shutting down as you read this blog post. Providers will continue to enhance their VoIP offerings as every business moves over to a digital telephone system. Digital is the future – VoIP is completely future proof.

Book Your Free VoIP Demo

Want to see in person how a VoIP telephone system will enhance your business? Book your free, no-obligation VoIP demo today. In this demo, we will discuss your business’s needs with you and show how VoIP telephony would benefit your business.

Please book your demo today by clicking filling in the form below.