Affordable Enterprise-class phone system for Small Biz
Blucows will drive your Small Biz the way to communicate by providing affordable enterprise-class phone systems traditionally used by much larger companies. Small Biz no longer have to make an investment for traditional PBX systems or settle for the typical feature-lean, unflexible key phone systems that have always look and sound small.
Even a company of 5 employees need standard features like voice mail, call forwarding, Do Not Disturb, and conferencing. Let's add automatic voice mail attachments as emails to your PDA or smartphone, hunt groups, blast groups, telecommuting, an Auto Attendant, and time-based routing to your phone system.
Blucows will give you all the features of a traditional PBX, and a little something more.
Traditional small business phone systems
require a hefty investment, unflexible, non-expandable, and
expensive office rent space to keep, expensive electricity consumption to power it up
an IT Professional on the payroll just to keep the system up and running
expensive training classes
followed by expensive equipment
followed by expensive maintenance agreements
expensive consultations when something went wrong not covered in the original training
All these things didn't add up to enterprise-class phone service for your company, they add up to expense.
 Your small business is only small in size.
Everything else about your company is today will drive to be the leader of tomorrow, paving the way for the rest of the market, just a matter of time.
When your resources are limited, the only thing keeping your small business from sounding large is the price of the expensive infrastructure that the Large Enterprises are using.
Blucows communication solutions will redefine the possibilities of your business telephony.
Reasons for Choosing Voice over IP - VoIP Advantages
By Nadeem Unuth
Here are the top reasons why companies want to adopt VoIP:
| Reason |
Percentage |
| Lower telecommunications costs |
66% |
| Desire to merge voice and data networks |
43% |
| Obtain a platform for one-stop communications in two or more areas |
41% |
| Increase collaboration benefits in two or more areas |
36% |
| Ease of management |
31% |
| Scalability |
24% |
Save a lot of money
If you don't use VoIP for voice communication, then you are most certainly using the good old phone line ( PSTN – Packet-Switched Telephone Network ). On a PSTN line, time is really money. You actually pay for each minute you spend communicating on the phone. International calls are much more expensive. Since VoIP uses the Internet as backbone, the only cost you have when using it is the monthly Internet bill to your ISP. Of course you need broadband Internet access, like ADSL, with a decent speed . In fact, unlimited 24/7 ADSL Internet service is what most people use today, and this causes your monthly cost to be of a fixed amount. You can speak as much as you wish on VoIP and the connection cost will still be the same.
Studies have shown that, compared to using a PSTN line, using VoIP can potentially make you save up to 40 % on local calls, and up to 90 % on international calls.
More than two persons
On the phone line, only two persons can speak at a time. With VoIP, you can setup a conference with a whole team communicating in real time. VoIP compresses data packets during transmission, and this causes more data to be handled over the carrier. As a result, more calls can be handled on one access line.
Abundant, Interesting and Useful Features
VoIP offers an abundant amount of interesting, useful and enhanced features, many of which come free with service packages from VoIP service providers. Which feature you want to include in your VoIP service package will depend on your communication needs.
There are features that allow you to manage your calls, to access additional services, to enjoy additional handy tools and to make your VoIP experience rich and sophisticated. Some of these features can be business tools while others can be truly helpful communication tools among friends and relatives.
Below is a list of the VoIP features you can have with your service provider. Each list item below links to a glossary explaining the feature.
Basic VoIP Features
- Caller ID
- Voicemail
- Fax
- 3-Way Calling
- Call Blocking
- Call Waiting
- Call Forwarding
- Caller ID With Name
- Last Number Re-dial
- Directory
- Local Number Portability
- Emergency Service
Advanced VoIP Features
- Anonymous Call Block
- Change Phone Number
- Keep Number For Life
- PC to Phone Option
- Telemarketer Blocking
- Area Code Selection
- Contact Lists
- Enhanced Voicemail
- Line Unavailable Forward
- Repeat Dial if Busy
- Toll Free Numbers
- Call Transfer
- Distinctive Ringing
- Extra Virtual Numbers
- Multi-Ring
- Return Call
- Travel Globally
- Caller ID Blocking
- Do Not Disturb
- International Blocking
- Online Account Management
- Speed Dialing
- Unlimited to the Globe
- SMS
More than voice
VoIP is based on the Internet Protocol (IP), which is in fact, along with TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), the basic underlying protocol for the Internet. By virtue of this, VoIP also handles media types other than voice: you can transfer images, video and text along with the voice. For instance, you can speak to someone while sending her files or even showing yourself using a web cam.
More efficient use of bandwidth
It is known that about 50 % of a voice conversation is silence. VoIP fills the ‘empty' silence spaces with data so that bandwidth in data communication channels is not wasted. In other words, a user is not given bandwidth when he is not talking, and this bandwidth is used efficiently for other bandwidth consumers. Moreover, compression and the ability to remove redundancy in some speech patterns add up to the efficiency.
Flexible network layout
The underlying network for VoIP does not need to be of a particular layout or topology . This makes it possible for an organization to make use of the power of proven technologies like ATM, SONET, Ethernet etc. VoIP can alwso be used over wireless networks like Wi-Fi .
When using VoIP, the network complexity inherent in PSTN connections is eliminated, yielding an integrated and flexible infrastructure which can actually support many types of communication. The system being more standardized, it requires less equipment management and is therefore more fault tolerant.
Tele-working
If you work in an organization using an intranet or extranet, you can still access your office from home through VoIP. You can convert your home into a segment of the office and remotely use the voice, fax and data services of your workplace through the organization's intranet. The portable nature of the VoIP technology is causing it to gain popularity as the trend is towards portable commodities. Portable hardware is becoming more and more common, as are portable services, and VoIP fits in well. |
