VoIP Telephony - A viable business Option

A decade ago, Voice over IP (VoIP) - aka Internet telephony - was all but unknown, until a small Israeli company called VocalTec launched a range of full-length ISA cards for PCs that allowed companies to pump their voice calls across the Internet.

Despite the fact that the ISA cards cost almost as much - and had more processing power - than their host PCs, they were a great success, as international phone calls were still relatively expensive.

Fast forward to today, and the processing power of the average PC has gone through the roof, with the result that a single PC/telecoms card can now handle several dozen VoIP calls at the same time.

This dramatic upswing in processing power has opened the doors to VoIP telephony to even the smallest business although, generally speaking, the larger a business is, the more phone lines it has, and the greater the savings are from moving to VoIP telephony.

Companies also have a choice with VoIP. They can either migrate to a complete in-house VoIP system - from around £6,000 and upwards - or use the lower-cost approach of having their telco or Internet service provider (ISP) process the calls.

Whichever VoIP system a company employs, the rapid rollout of broadband in the UK is helping matters immensely by making VoIP telephony available to businesses in all but the most remote of locations.

Why VoIP?

VoIP is not just about discount long distance and international calls, it's about zero-cost inter-office calls, which are routed wholly across the Internet, rather than the regular phone network.