VoIP Service Yuba City

What do you need to know about switching to a VoIP service in Yuba City?

There was once a time when businesses steered clear of VoIP because it was too unreliable to be trusty for mainstream use. Now, many businesses have concluded that not only has VoIP matured enough to be trusted, but it’s also too useful to be ignored. With that in mind, here’s what you need to know about switching to a VoIP service in Yuba City.

Get VoIP Service

It’s best to start by just replacing your current telephone service

The big difference between VoIP and the regular telephone networks (landline and cellular) is that VoIP converts soundwaves into data packets, whereas the regular telephone networks convert them into electrical energy. This means that, with VoIP, anything you can do with data, you can do with your audio.

Just because you can, however, it doesn’t mean that you should, especially not in the beginning. For many companies, especially SMBs, that’s a way to get tied up in knots and potentially end up wishing that you hadn’t bothered. That would be very disappointing given everything you could do with VoIP if you implement it properly.

In short, as is often the case, it’s generally best to start small and just implement a like-for-like replacement of what you already have. Then build up from there if you wish.

Be aware that bandwidth is crucial to VoIP

The reason why VoIP was originally mistrusted for unreliability had nothing to do with VoIP itself and everything to do with the relative weakness of the internet infrastructure, especially the actual connections themselves. This means that you need to be very realistic about your bandwidth requirements and make sure they are met.

For completeness, this goes at least double if you’re planning on using video-calling as it is notoriously bandwidth-intensive. This is another argument in favor of starting small and building up in line with your business needs.

If you are using a DSL connection remember that you need to think about both the downstream and upstream speeds. These are only guaranteed to be identical if you have a synchronous connection. If you have an asynchronous connection, the downstream speed is likely to be noticeably higher than the upstream speed. The upstream speed matters a lot for VoIP so you may find yourself needing to upgrade your connection.

You’re also going to want a backup connection and this should be both from a different provider (watch out for situations when the same company is operating under different brands) and a different connection medium (so that if there’s an issue with the main line, you have a different option). Ideally, you’d want Cable + Fiber Optic but you might be able to live with Cable + Copper or Fiber Optic + Copper.

As a final point, you can aim to minimize your need for bandwidth by using what you have astutely. For example, you can have network policies that prioritize data according to business needs, hence, for example, audio data would be given priority over emails, which would be given priority over the printer queue.

Remember that increased network traffic increases the need for robust network security

When you use a regular landline or cell phone, for the most part, security is down to the network provider. There is a bit of nuance here, especially with smartphones, which definitely benefit from security protection, but in general, it holds true. When you use VoIP, however, security is down to you and your vendor, hence the importance of choosing a vendor with a good track record in this area.

For completeness, the security precautions you need to take with VoIP are the same as the security precautions you need to take with network traffic in general. It’s just that the increase in network traffic will place more of a load on your existing security resources so you may need to upgrade them.

in mind that all VoIP networks depend on a SIP

A SIP is a Session Initiation Protocol and it’s basically what makes it possible for any given VoIP service to interface with any other VoIP service and also any of the various landline and cellular networks around the world.

In the consumer world, SIPs often operate on the principle of least-cost routing, which is exactly what it sounds like. The key point to note is that it prioritizes cost over call-quality. This is often absolutely fine for social calls, but completely unacceptable for business calls. That does not, however, stop some business-orientated VoIP service vendors from using this approach anyway. This is one of the many reasons why you should be cautious about going with a vendor that offers much lower prices than the competition.

If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced VoIP service partner in Yuba City, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.