VoIP: Customers & Companies

Voiceover IP (VoIP) is huge in the business world today. Thousands of companies are using it due to how inexpensive it is, how easy it is to set-up, maintain, and use, and because of the flexibility of its network. Voiceover IP is simply an LAN based telephone with many more feature than a regular telephone at a much better price.

What is LAN and why is it the key to Voiceover IP? LAN stands for local area network. A local area network is nothing more than multiple computers that are linked together with cables to share information, printers, etc. It allows multiple computers to be run from one area. It also allows large companies to use internet networks to communicate from building to building fast and easy no matter how far they are away from each other. It is the key to Voiceover IP because this network is exactly how voiceover IP works. These connections allow user to send information from any personal computer (that is equipped with a network card) to any other machine that is in the same network, or if the internet is also available to other computers outside of the network and anyone’s personal or business phone.

Prior to Voiceover IP, everyone was forced to pay a large number of fees for long distance to call other buildings, customers, etc. Because Voiceover IP runs through computers, as a customer of a Voiceover IP provider, you only pay the monthly fee for the internet connection. There is a small amount that has to be paid initially for Voiceover IP for the LAN card, but they are relatively inexpensive if you consider the amount of money you spent on long distance last year.

Voiceover IP also adds valuable resources for customers of companies that use it. Many companies that have Voiceover IP, allow customers to contact them through the internet at any hour of the day. The problem before was that many large corporations like Microsoft, had too many offices in too many cities to try to have one person in each office all hours of the day. That is ridiculous, if you think that every location is only getting one phone call a night. But, Voiceover IP allows the company to have one location for all of the calls to be routed after normal business hours without paying the phone company an ungodly rate and without having to pay millions of dollars a year to employees who have nothing to do. Ultimately, this also is a perk to anyone looking for this shift in a call center environment. Think about it would you rather sit in one of the smaller offices taking maybe one phone call a night or would you rather sit in a call center that takes several hundred phone calls a night? Now this is definitely an estimate, I don’t have any idea what the call volume of any Microsoft office is, but I think you get the point.

The major problem with Voiceover IP for companies and customers is that