Why cant I use Skype for my business phone calls? Its free......a common question asked of Telecoms Resellers.
The answer is you can, its called Voice over Internet Protocol - there are several types of VoIP, commonly nowadays there is SIP, H.3223, Cisco Skinny etc. but they are all types of VoIP. VoIP is nowadays commonly touted as the technology of the future in telecoms. Every manufacturer, every reseller will be telling you their product is better at VoIP than all the others, all the Resellers will be telling you the benefits of IP trunks rather than traditional Analogue or ISDN connections - because this is a technology that is coming of age.
However, for good quality Business Telephone calls, there are serious issues with Voice over Internet Protocol to consider.
The main issue is continuity. VoIP is usually delivered into a business or a home via a Broadband ADSL connection. ADSL/Broadband is a shared connection, you share it with other users, thats why it is cheap! This is called "Contention". The more users you share the connection with the higher the contention ratio, eg. 20:1 is 20 users sharing one connection, 50:1 is 50 users sharing the connection. This is commonly called packet switched technology, meaning the voice calls are broken into packets, like data, and transmitted. Whereas with ISDN or Analogue lines you have a dedicated connection with dedicated bandwidth, which you "own" for the duration of the call. Nobody else shares that circuit while you are using it - this is called Circuit Switched technology.
Have you noticed how your home Broadband/ADSL works well during the day until 4pm? And it is slower at weekends? This is because when the kids get home from school they download stuff and watch stuff online, sharing the bandwidth of your connection. Less information can get through, slowing your connection.
The same is true of all Broadband connections, including Business ADSL.
For data this is irritating but not the end of the world, but if you are using the connection to talk the conversation quality is rubbish or even the connection drops. Not good if you are trying to project a quality business image to potential customers or suppliers!
I have tried many different types of ADSL from many providers, and currently, no matter what they promise, this is still the case.
The next issue with VoIP is cost. If you use home grade ADSL it is cheap, true, but you still need to rent an analogue line to deliver it on, as well as the ADSL cost, so its not as cheap as you think. If you address the quality issues by renting Business Grade ADSL, it is much more costly. To guarantee quality calls via ADSL, you really need to rent Leased Line circuits - which really are costly!
The third issue is downtime. Virtually all ADSL connections in the UK are delivered via Copper Wire connections that are ultimately provided by BT. BT will only contract to address a line fault within 2 days - so if the line is faulty your business calls may be lost for 2 whole days!
So why on earth would you use Voice over Internet Protocol for business calls?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment