As people are leaving land lines for cell phones, there is still a big need in business for regular old phones. Your choices are to install a phone system at your office or to go with a VOIP service. Up until a few years ago, we had our phone service with a big phone company, (you know who). Our phones consisted of an internal phone server in our office connected to real phone lines. We left the big phone company for a local cable company. They provided great service but at a price. Then I decided it was time to consider going with a VOIP (Voice over IP) service. VOIP provides phone service over your internet service, think skype but more elegant. After much research, we chose RingCentral. Basically you buy VOIP phones which look like a normal phone and plug them into your internet with the existing Ethernet network.
You should make sure you have really good internet though. Low bandwidth isn’t going to cut it. However, our cable internet is fast, reliable and works great with VOIP. In fact they sell a VOIP service too. If your bandwidth isn’t very good, you should probably stay where you are.
On the upside, you can get a lot with VOIP systems. Basically it’s like having a real phone system in your building but without installing anything. In addition, you may also get some other features included. For instance, with Ringcentral, they offer a screen sharing service very similar to Gotomeeting or Join. The great thing is that it’s included if you only need to have 4 people in a meeting. We use this all the time. But sometimes you need more. We often have board or finance committee meetings which can go well above 4 attendees. RingCentral has a higher level service for people who need more attendees.
Another great thing about VOIP services comes into play when you have people who work from home or if you have multiple locations. Since your phone service is on the internet, you can take a phone, plug it in anywhere with good internet and the phone thinks it right at home.
At any rate, being the cheapskate that I am, I changed to another VOIP provider about 6 months ago. Unfortunately, while customer support was full of very nice people, their VOIP service was definitely below par. After agonizing over this for a while I bit the bullet and switched back over the weekend.
I have been known to jump onto the bleeding edge but this time it just didn’t work out. RingCentral made me a great deal to come back and I jumped. Now off to bigger and better things…
