VoIP Service Providers Roseville

Choose The Best VoIP Service Providers In Roseville

It’s taken a while for VoIP to be accepted as a serious business tool, but now the sector just keeps growing and growing. This means that there is much more competition amongst VoIP service providers than there is amongst the traditional telcos. That’s good for prices, but it does mean that companies have to make sure that their vendor-selection process is both thorough and fair. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to choosing between VoIP service providers in Roseville.

How to choose VoIP Service Providers?

1. Decide what you want in your initial VoIP implementation

The basic guideline for a VoIP implementation is that nobody should be left any worse off by the switch. This means that all the functionality of your existing telephone system has to be maintained (unless it’s become obsolete). For completeness, this includes faxing. If you still have fax machines you have to choose between keeping them as they are, getting rid of them completely, or switching to Fax over IP (fax). In most cases, the last option is by far the most sensible.

Most SMBs tend to focus on the mainstream parts of VoIP. In other words, they want basic calling and call-management, possibly including call-recording plus conference-calling and video-calling. These are the VoIP services that generally do the most to reduce costs (in the case of conference-calling and video-calling by reducing the need for business travel). These are therefore the functions that business-grade VoIP service providers are just about guaranteed to support.

For completeness, many VoIP service providers will also support Fax over IP, even though it’s technically different from VoIP. If you want to work with one who doesn’t, there are specialist Fax over IP vendors who can provide you with the necessary functionality.

Once you start going beyond this, then you’re probably going to find yourself quickly heading into the area of customized solutions and integrations. This means that you’re going to need a VoIP service provider with the technical expertise to cope. You’re also going to need one who understands SMBs rather than being purely focused on enterprise customers.

2. Decide how you are going to take care of essential practicalities

In the context of VoIP, two main practicalities need to be managed before your implementation can go live. These are bandwidth and user equipment.

3. Bandwidth

Most companies are going to need to upgrade their bandwidth significantly to cope with VoIP. You, therefore, need to decide on the best approach to meeting these extra requirements. Even if you run your own data center and generally manage your infrastructure yourself, it may be worth using some form of managed hosting for your VoIP-related needs.

The reason for this is that you’re going to need sufficient bandwidth to cope with peak periods, no matter how short they might be. Given the demands of VoIP, companies who insist on doing everything in-house could wind up finding themselves spending a lot of money on hardware that is rarely used but still has to be kept for when it is needed.

Managed hosting makes it easier for companies to tailor their resources to suit wherever they are in their business cycle. You can organize it together with or separately from your VoIP service contract. Whatever option you choose, it’s advisable to make an early start on putting everything in place as it is vital to the success of your VoIP implementation project.

4. User equipment

As a minimum, you’re going to need softphones plus headsets and/or VoIP handsets. You may also want speakerphones (for conference-calling) and webcams for video-calling. Softphones will come from your VoIP service vendor. In and of themselves, they’re almost always free (or charged at a nominal cost), but they do need headsets to work and it’s very much preferable to invest in decent handsets.

This means that the price difference between softphones and decent, entry-level VoIP handsets is less than you might think. It can be worth keeping this in mind as you may find that you come across VoIP service vendors who have generally good offerings but who have softphone clients which don’t work for you. As with cell phone contracts, having your vendor bundle equipment generally requires you to sign up for a fairly lengthy contract, but if you were planning on doing this anyway, the convenience may be worth it.

4. Decide what you need from a VoIP service contract

Before you even start looking at calling plans, you need to set out clear minimum standards for technical quality, customer service and technical support, and security and compliance. Only look at the deals offered by VOIP service vendors who can meet or exceed your defined minimum standards.

If you’d like to speak to one of the best VoIP service providers in Roseville, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.