Building service contractors compete on a playing field that requires communications with colleagues and clients who may be halfway across the state or country. This has pushed communication to a revolutionary point in which traditional landline use is becoming unfeasible both from a fiscal and practical standpoint as less expensive and more utilitarian forms of voice communication have emerged.

This is where Voice-over-Internet Protocol, or VoIP, enters the arena. VoIP digitizes the voice and converts it into bits of data and then sends it to the receiver.

Popular VoIP services

There are several services that offer VoIP including Via:talk, phonepower, ITP, Vonage and Skype. Skype, probably the most popular VoIP service, allows users to download the software, set up an account and call other Skype users for free. Other services also offer free phone calls or competitive rates compared to traditional phone services.

The cost savings of VoIP also can be felt from not having to jump on a plane, rent a car or a hotel room to meet clients since it provides functionality that allows the user to hold a conference call for up to five users for free. Skype also allows users to purchase “out credits” that allows the user to call non-Skype users for a rate.

“The long distance rates are dramatically lower than you would find with the phone company,” says Shel Holtz, accredited business communicator and consultant and owner, Holtz Business + Technology, Concord, Calif.

Another advantage in using VoIP is the ability to couple a teleconference with an online meeting in which the meeting holder can show a document or presentation on his or her computer in his or her office while participants watch, wherever they may be located. Some of the services also provide video capabilities for these virtual meetings.

“You can even record the phone conversation and post it to a Web site or add it to a blog,” says Jim Kelton, president of Altius Information Technologies in Santa Ana, Calif. “With more and more organizations going green and trying to be more eco-friendly, then this is a way that you don’t have to put your sales people on the road.”

Another interesting feature that Skype provides are portable phone numbers in which a user can get a phone call transferred to a cell phone when they are on the road, a function that Holtz uses. The service also provides international phone numbers for those who do business around the world for about $35 a year. For example, Holtz has a phone number for domestic callers to use and a phone number for callers in Europe to use.

“People in Europe who want to reach me, who don’t have Skype, can dial a Europe number for a lot less money and reach me on my cell phone or over the Internet if I am at my computer,” says Holtz, who did this interview over Skype.

Since VoIP digitizes the data, there are several advantages to it compared to a regular phone line. First, services such as Vonage allow the user to retrieve voice mail in their e-mail. Voice mail comes as an e-mail attachment as a sound file.

“As soon as you turn anything into digits, there’s things that you can do with them other than those things that you are limited to doing,” says Holtz, referring to typical phone lines.

Enterprises that use VoIP are finding that they need to balance their bandwidth usage between voice and data. High bandwidth events such as conference calls and virtual meetings with presentations need to be planned and prioritized.

Another factor in deciding to go with a VoIP service is support reliability and whether the service provider is a sound enterprise since the software may be proprietary and not open-source.

“You have to, from a business risk management standpoint, really believe in the organization and where it is headed,” Kelton says. “If you put you organization on that technology and something ever happened to it, you could be putting yourself at risk.”

Consider other factors

There are security issues that may increase the cost of network administration from software, hardware and IT personnel standpoints. Sound quality is another issue that businesses must deal with when examining whether to use VoIP. Some VoIP services provide free software so testing the quality is easy and highly recommended.

Another consideration that must be made is whether hardware will need to be purchased to work with VoIP. Since VoIP is through a desktop or laptop, a traditional telephone might not be compatible.

“When you add in other layers of third-party services and gateways, it just adds to the complexity,” Kelton says.

Brendan O’Brien is a freelance writer based in Greenfield, Wis.




POSTED ON: 10/1/2008