Friday, September 19, 2008

If You Travel, You Can Take Your VOIP Phone With You

Business, Communication.

4 things you need to know before you switch to voip services - voip service for making and receiving phone calls is probably the most cost effective way to communicate, and is showing the phone companies that their" cash cow" of home telephone service may be coming to an end on the horizon. Your High - Speed Internet Connection is critical.


Still, VOIP service is not for everyone, and here are some things that you need to verify and feel good about before you consider switching to VOIP service. - almost any voip service that you choose is not going to include high - speed internet service. However, what the VOIP service provider does not tell you is that your high - speed Internet connection needs to be fast, and reliable, stable. The VOIP provider assumes you already have that, and would have that whether you decided to implement VOIP or not, which is probably true in most cases. Depending on where you are and what high - speed Internet provider you have chosen, this may not be a given. There are various online sites that allow you to do a speed test on your connection so you can get a feel for how fast it is. The VOIP provider has ZERO control over this - if you have a lousy Internet connection, VOIP will be lousy, it is a one - to - one relationship.


The problem is that these tests do not tell the whole story - it might have been fast at the moment you did the test, but is slower than molasses an hour later. - this could be a sign that voip will not work well on it. Do you notice it stopping when you are using it or having significant time delays? Also, do people in your household also use the computer when you would be talking on your VOIP phone? Typically this is more of a problem for DSL than for cable, but it can represent a problem with a cable connection as well. If so, your connection may not be capable of handling both connections at the same time.


Is your only option a satellite high - speed Internet connection? - you are not going to be happy with the results of voip service on a satellite connection. Forget it. When your high - speed Internet connection goes out, so does your phone. With a VOIP phone, you are depending on your Internet connection to make and receive phone calls. Despite the fact that they have over - charged us for years, you need to give the telephone company credit, since when you pick up the phone, you almost always can hear the comforting sound of a dial tone, ready to make your call. If your high - speed service goes down, then your ability to use your VOIP phone also goes down until the internet service comes back up.


Be sure 911 is supported. - this again goes back to the reliability of your high - speed internet connection and provider. All VOIP providers are supposed to be setup so that they support 911( or E - 911) services in case of emergency. But this same ability does not exist with a VOIP phone, so you need to register your VOIP phone with the service so that if you call 911 from your VOIP phone, the emergency responders will know where to go. You see, with a traditional phone line, if you call 911, they can tell where you are calling from. Be ready to save money and have tremendous flexibility. At no extra charge, you typically get the features you would pay the phone company extra for, call waiting, like caller ID, voice mail, and call blocking.


There is no doubt about it, VOIP service is significantly cheaper than traditional phones from the phone company. - you also typically get unlimited or high - usage local and long distance calling throughout the country at no additional cost with voip. If you are traveling to visit your friends in Denver or cousin in New York, just plug your VOIP phone into their high - speed modem and you can continue to make and receive calls just as if you were at home, using your same phone number. If you travel, you can take your VOIP phone with you. If you are in a hotel in Chicago, again plug your VOIP phone into the high - speed connection in your hotel room, and you are making and receiving phone calls as if you were at home.

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