Make sure your VoIP provider is government regulated; Sunrocket, a non-regulated company and a VoIP provider with over 200,000 subscribers, permanently closed their doors and shut down their system with little or no advanced notice. This left everybody with a Sunrocket phone number or a number that was ported to Sunrocket from the customer’s previous carrier with no phone service. A lot of customers lost their published phone numbers forever. TELX will not refer any of our clients to a non-regulated company.
Make sure your VoIP provider is government regulated; Sunrocket, a non-regulated company and a VoIP provider with over 200,000 subscribers, permanently closed their doors and shut down their system with little or no advanced notice. This left everybody with a Sunrocket phone number or a number that was ported to Sunrocket from the customer’s previous carrier with no phone service. A lot of customers lost their published phone numbers forever. TELX will not refer any of our clients to a non-regulated company.
Redundancy; The smaller carriers providing Hosted\Cloud VoIP service typically house their equipment and servers at one facility. They pay for wholesale circuits to be brought in to their building via underground or overhead. Their method of redundancy is running multiple servers if one fails and a gas powered generator if they lose power. There is a weakest link to this scenario, the circuits coming into the building. If a disaster strikes, like hurricane Sandy, the carrier could lose all of their circuits. If that were the case, all customers connected to the carrier’s facility will be out of service. A carrier with one facility is called a single node. The carriers we represent invest millions in their fault-tolerant redundancy infrastructure which include multi-node meshed locations spread out over a wide geographical area. A meshed multi-node backbone means a customer’s call is connected at the same time to a minimum of two nodes. If any one node fails the customer call stays connected. Hurricane Sandy was a wake-up call for everyone, especially businesses. Disasters can and will happen and it’s important that the carrier you choose has the infrastructure and redundancy to keep you in business.TELX does not recommend Hosted\Cloud VoIP providers with only a single node location.
Voice over Internet Protocol is a technology that enables telephone calls to be made over computer networks like the Internet. VoIP converts analogue voice signals into digital data packets and supports real-time, two-way transmission of conversations using Internet Protocol (IP).
Phone calls can be made over the Internet - Instead of traditional phone lines, which typically cost more money. The cable companies are a prime example of using the Internet for carrying call traffic. Keep in mind all premise-based phone systems, without any additional hardware will accommodate the VoIP connections from the cable service. It is the responsibility of the cable company to provide the hardware.
Accommodating for multiple offices spread out over a geographical area - Can connect all their on premise phone systems via a private VoIP network to act as one large virtual phone system. The main benefit allows for intercom and transferring calls between sites as if all employees are in the same building.
Work from home employees - Can connect remote IP phones to their Internet connection and become an extension off their company’s main phone system via the company’s VoIP network.
Hosted or cloud-based VoIP service options - Runs on a computer server housed at the provider’s location anywhere in the world. Users remote IP phones are connected via the Internet to the provider’s facility and all calls are transported over the Internet, otherwise known as the cloud.
SIP Trunks - A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunk is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service that connects a company's on premise telephone system to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) via the Internet. Using a SIP trunk can simplify administration and reduce costs for the organization as the SIP connection typically uses the same Internet access that is used for data. This often removes the need to install fixed line circuits such as Basic Rate Interface (BRI) or Primary Rate Interface (PRI) telephone circuits.
To view our wide selection of available phone options, click here. We recommend contacting us to ensure compatibility with your existing phone system.