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Project : Business VoIP Solution for the Small / Medium sized Business

There are many many small/medium sized offices with between 5 and 100 employees, For these small medium sized business , it is generally more cost effective to select a Business VoIP service provider that is dedicated to this particular market. This is one of the fastest growing areas for Business VoIP.

For this particular Business VoIP market, the VoIP service provider typically installs a voice enabled router that connects to a T1/E1 line depending on your telephony and data requirements. This can support all of your voice and data needs for your company and provides a Quality of Service (QoS) such that your voice packets get higher priority than your data packets during high traffic times. A large switch connects the router to your Local Area Network (LAN) and any IP based device can then be connected to the switch whether it be a computer, a VoIP phone, or just an voice gateway and a regular analog telephone.

One possible Business VoIP solution for small to medium sized businesses is highlighted in the following diagram. Note that additional phone lines and PCs can be added simply by connecting them to the large voice enabled switch.

This type of configuration is often referred to as a hosted VoIP or IP PBX phone system (see notes below for further information). All of the technology for handling your calls resides in the VoIP service providers network, so any type of adds, moves or changes can be done easily by you through a web browser and a secure login website. This removes the cost of hiring someone to do this.
The features for these plans are extensive. If you need to add an employee, the system is very flexible. Simply add another business VoIP seat (i.e. another phone line) with your web browser, connect your phone to the LAN and you are up and running. No more expensive and time consuming installations to add a telephone line. Likewise, if you cannot make it into your office say due to bad weather simply stay at home, use your own internet broadband connection to login to the secure website for your hosted VoIP PBX and forward your work calls to your home or cell phone.

Note that sometimes a SMB will keep a certain number of regular phone lines or Primary Rate Interfaces (PRI) that connect to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for backup purposes. If you lose power to your building and you do not have some form of backup for your power, you will lose all communication to the outside world. This is one of the main reasons a SMB may consider keeping one or two traditional telephone lines.

Hosted IP PBX
We touched on the term Hosted IP PBX above since this is the most common VoIP service used by small to medium sized businesses. Let's expand on this further.

A hosted IP PBX is basically an IP-based management service located at your VoIP service providers network operations center. The functions associated with a hosted IP PBX service are similar to those of hardware PBX systems installed at your business site. The main difference is that your company is not responsible for buying, installing, or maintaining any of the PBX equipment. It is all maintained and upgraded by the service provider thus saving your business significant money in terms of capital expenditure and of course administration costs since you do not need to pay an IT person to maintain your own PBX.

What are some of the advantages of a hosted IP PBX?

It is scalable so your business can expand or contract at any time.
The equipment is usually made by high caliber companies like Cisco Systems and is therefore very reliable.
The PBX is configurable so you can easily add users and modify features through a secure internet site.
It has many productivity enhancing features such as the ability to listen to voicemails from a PC, call forwarding, individual fax numbers for each user and many more....

See also

-Project :Business VoIP Solution for the the Large Business
-Project :Business VoIP Solution for the the small/media Business
-Project :Business VoIP Solution for the the SOHO
-How to build an IP PBX with Asterisk Card?
-The features of Asterisk
-ChinaRoby VoIP products are compatible with these Service Providers
-Roby VoIP Phone Test Report