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Top 4 Ways to Cut Your Business Budget With VoIP

Nancy Nally — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:00:32 +0000

Web workers do pretty much everything else online, so why not use Internet phone service, too? Besides our natural technology addiction, there are actually compelling financial reasons for why using VoIP (voice over IP) services can be a good idea.

The cost savings can be significant over traditional landline phone services, depending on the needs of your business and whether you make a lot of long-distance or international calls. Here’s a look at the top four ways to cut your web worker budget by using a VoIP service.

Get a business phone number at a fraction of a landline’s cost. Using VoIP can save money on a business line in both service and installation costs. Service for a landline into my home office from our phone company would cost around $30 per month for local service, with long-distance calls additional.

In contrast, VoIP provider Skype offers numbers for pay-as-you-go customers for only $60 per year, plus per-minute usage fees. For infrequent phone users, this is a much cheaper option than a landline. For heavier users, Vonage offers 1,500 minutes of outbound calls to the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico (and unlimited incoming calls), a free dedicated fax line, call waiting, voicemail and caller ID for $39.99 per month.

Installation with VoIP can also save money over a landline if your office is not pre-wired for a phone line. New phone wiring can get extremely expensive, depending on the office location. But VoIP installation can be much cheaper, or even free, depending on your choice of equipment, provider and office Internet connection.

As an added bonus, if you have a lot of business contacts in another area code, you can request a VoIP phone number that will be local for those clients.

Make long-distance calls for free or cheap. Even if you don’t want a VoIP phone number, it can still save you money on long-distance phone calls. Computer-to-computer calls are free using most VoIP services, so if your frequent contacts use a service like Skype or GTalk, you can talk or even video conference with them for free anytime you are both at your computers.

Calling from your computer to a non-international phone number is also extremely affordable with services like Skype, which charges only $0.021 per minute to numbers in the U.S. It’s only slightly higher for Europe or other countries. If you have an iPhone or Windows Mobile phone and a Wi-Fi connection, Skype will also let you place calls from your cell phone. Vonage is also working on an app for smartphones.

Save cell phone minutes on the road. If you keep a minimal minute plan on your cell phone, the usage spike of occasional travel can consume your minutes fast. Using a VoIP service to make calls from the road can keep you under your plan’s limit and avoid cell overage fees being added to your travel budget. I use Skype for lengthy calls home from my hotel in the evenings.

An added bonus is that my autistic 6 year old won’t talk on a regular phone but will when she can see me via a video call.

Video conferencing can reduce the need to travel. Sometimes it is helpful to do business face-to-face, or you need to share visuals during what could otherwise be a phone conference. VoIP services (like GTalk or Skype) can create a face-to-face meeting for free, and allow for the use of visual aids or even screen sharing. And since computer-to-computer calls are usually free, it definitely saves over the price of travel.

Do you use VoIP for business?

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VoIP: Dead or Alive?

Om Malik — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:36:06 +0000

For the past few days, the VoIP community has been indulging in a bit of soul-searching. The debate: Is VoIP dead? To pragmatists such as Alec Saunders, the answer is yes. In his well-reasoned polemic, “2008: The Year VoIP Died,” he succinctly writes, “Voice over IP is just a transport and signaling technology. It’s plumbing.” Harsh, but true!

Of course, on the other side of the debate are folks such as Jeff Pulver and Jon Arnold, both with deep interests in the success of VoIP, who seem to think that VoIP is in for a renaissance. Pulver argues that we are going through Internet Communications Continuum, or “the continued evolution of the IP Communications Industry. In my case, this continuum represents all forms of IP Communications, including: VoIP, Instant Messaging, Presence, IP Signaling, Internet TV, Unified Communications, Social Media and more.”

They continue to think of VoIP as a revolution. The reality, however, is more mundane and as Alec said, boring. Where do we come out on this debate? On the side of realism. About two months ago, Ian Bell on our behalf analyzed the state of VoIP and why it was “dead.” We were egged on by some comments made by Skype’s general manager of voice and video, Jonathan Christensen, at an industry conference a few weeks ago.

Towards the end of that post, Ian pointed out that the current spate of problems facing the VoIP sector was lack of imagination on the part of the industry because its players went “after low-hanging fruit and forcing their innovations to be defined within the walls of the PSTN.” It is not just the failed voice service providers who took the easy way out, but also the so-called social voice innovators.

My friend Daemon sees a lot of hope in the new services that are emerging, but I remain skeptical. Not because I am a hater. Far from it. It is just that the VoIP landscape is littered with carcasses of companies that represented mediocrity and marginal ideas. There is some hope on the horizon, but we have been fooled before.

What side are you on?

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Making VoIP Work For You

Jason Harris — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:00:42 +0000

A common misnomer about Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is that it requires you to be using a headset, tethered to your computer. This is simply untrue as modern VoIP services and solutions use either a) normal corded and cordless phones or b) a specialized phone that resembles a cordless phone or cell phone – just modified to utilized VoIP technology.

VoIP has some major advantages over traditional landline phones. First, typically you can call phones in the US and Canada for one monthly flat rate. Also, international calls can be made very cheaply. Included services with your flat rate service include: call waiting, call forwarding, online enabled voice mail, CallerID, and many more. Whereas conventional phone companies charge you individually for each of these services, VoIP providers give them to you for one flat rate.

Where do you begin if you’d like to use your broadband connection to lower your phone bill dramatically? Lets walk through some of the options.

More “Traditional” VoIP Services

Vonage is the most well-known Internet telephony service, thanks to their aggressive marketing campaigns. Vonage is a service that gives you a telephony adapter that converts your standard voice signals into packets that can be sent over the internet. Therefore, you can plug your normal phones into this adapter and start dialing the same way you do with a landline. Vonage service runs $25/month for unlimited calling to the US and Canada and many additional services including voicemail, call forwarding, etc. Vonage requires a U.S. shipping address so you must live in the U.S. to use Vonage service.

Vonage service includes e911, which is a service that enables emergency responders to locate you when you dial 911. Just a few years ago, before e911, there were incidents where responders couldn’t located VoIP users who called for emergency assistance. Now with e911, you give your physical location to the VoIP service provider when you sign up for service. Accordingly, it is important to update your address with our VoIP service provider should you move.

Packet8 is a veteran VoIP provider and prides itself on stability and reliability. Packet8 sets itself apart from the VoIP pack by offering solid service and optional video conferencing features. Their most popular plan, Freedom Unlimited, includes calling to United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Guam, France, Italy, Ireland, Spain, and the UK for the flat rate of $24.95/month not including taxes and regulatory fees. Packet8 charges a $30 activation charge. Like Vonage, Packet8 will provide you with a telephone adapter. Packet8 also includes e911.

There is a difference between Packet8 and many other VoIP providers that needs to be noted. The voice technology Packet8 uses to transfer your voice over the Internet, called a codec, is different than Vonage. Packet8 uses g.729 whereas Vonage utilizes g.711. The result, in my experience, is that voice quality suffers. This difference is especially noticeable when two parties on a phone call attempt to speak at the same time and drown each other out because of the way g.729 functions.

Rounding out the group of notable VoIP providers is ViaTalk. One of the lesser known VoIP providers, ViaTalk prides itself on outstanding customer support. You can either pay for an entire year (currently priced at $200/year) or monthly at $23/month, not including fees and taxes. Their feature set includes voice mail, caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, call return (*69) and an impressive customer control panel. e911 service is included with ViaTalk service. ViaTalk, along with Vonage, is only available in the United States.

I have had to work with ViaTalk customer support on a few occasions and have found them a pleasure to work with. Their support is U.S. based and available 24 hours a day.

Skype

Unlike the afore mentioned options, Skype does not use a telephone adapter to make your voice calls route over the Internet. Skype is the grand daddy of the VoIP world and is wildly popular as a computer-based VoIP service. They offer very cheap voice calls to landlines and cell phones that are billed at around 2 cents a minute. They’ve partnered with a few hardware manufacturers and have built Skype phones that look exactly like a cell phone or conventional cordless phones. My favorite device is the NetGear VoIP841, however I look forward to trying more in the near future.

Skype recently announced a monthly plan that includes unlimited calling to the United States and Canada for $2.95/month. Skype calls to landlines and cell phones used to vary in call quality, but I have found SkypeOut calls to be as good if not better than a normal landline phone conversation. To see if Skype might work for you, download Skype and make a few calls to see if your quality is up to acceptable for you. To get a phone number for people to dial you from conventional phones, you must purchase a SkypeIn number which runs $12 for a 3 month subscription or $36 for one year.

Important notes:

You cannot use Skype to dial 911 in an emergency. So if you need to dial 911, do it from a cell phone if Skype is your only calling option. Skype does not use e911.
With any VoIP service, service can go out from time to time, and relies on electric service. It’s important to have a backup plan such as a cell phone in order to conduct business and make phone calls should your VoIP go out for any reason.
These VoIP services are intented for those living in the U.S. For international VoIP, Skype would be my first suggestion. If you have experience with an alternative international VoIP provider, please share in the comments.
VoIP call quality is dependent on the quality of your broadband connection to the Internet.

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