VOIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol

Historically, phone calls used a network made up of copper wires and switches that created a circuit between the caller and the person being called. This technology was mature and fairly reliable, but the drawback was that there had to be a pair of copper wires for every call that needed to go from one place to another. Copper wires had to be run from house to house, neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city, country to country - and continent to continent.

The modern solution to this problem uses data networks that allow information - like your audio conversation - to be broken up into packets and shipped over a shared network link.

VOIP For Businesses

If you use a PBX and VOIP in your business, you cable for data exclusively. You increase the size and capacity of your data network, but maintaining one network with more bandwidth is less expensive than maintaining two networks.

And if you have multiple offices and you maintain a data link between them, you can keep all of your phone service inside your network, where you control configuration and security. Your phone service will go to the public phone network only when you connect a call to a phone outside of your VOIP network.

With VOIP the number is assigned to the phone, not the wall jack, so you issue a phone to an employee, and it works wherever they plug it in. With modern VOIP PBX solutions, you have significant administrative control over things like who your employees can call, when they can call, how long they can talk, who can call them, and more.

Things to Consider with VOIP

Since your voice services will be on your data network failure of a network element can shut down both data and voice service. For example losing a switch, will make it impossible for people on that switch to call and report the outage. Also your data network must be is robust enough for the data load your VOIP service will place on it. If you have high latency or low throughput segments in your network, VOIP will make this painfully clear.

All in all if you're thinking of putting in a PBX you should consider VOIP as data networks are already replacing voice communication.