Taking the VoIP plunge

...to power critical equipment in an outage. Of course, losing your VoIP service in an outage may not be quite as much of a problem as losing phone service was 20 years ago, since a large percentage of people now carry mobile phones that can be used to place calls in such an emergency situation.

VoIP quality of service can be affected by other traffic on your internal network, and of course if the network goes down due to a DoS attack or a hardware failure, you'll lose phone service too.

Some small-business owners in the US have been hesitant to go VoIP-only because of uncertainty about emergency-service response. A few years ago, some VoIP services didn't support emergency (9-1-1) calls. However, US Government mandates now require all VoIP providers to implement e911 (Enhanced 9-1-1) service.

One of the potential limitations come from what many see as an advantage of VoIP — the fact that you can "take it with you". That is, you can pack up the box and phone and plug it in at a different location if you travel on business or go on vacation. However, if you do this, your actual physical location won't match the address information your VoIP provider has for you, and emergency calls might route to the wrong place.

VoIP lines may also present problems working with some fax machines and TiVO-type or cable TV services that need to use a phone line to download programme guides, order pay-per-view programming, and so on. While the pay-per-view issue is primarily a problem for home users (and can be worked around now many of these services can use a broadband Internet connection instead of a phone line), the other issues are more of a problem for businesses.

What VoIP does better
We can sum up the advantages of VoIP pretty easily: more features for less money. Most residential and small-business packages give you voicemail that lets you receive your messages via email and play them on your computer; three-way calling; caller ID; and many other features that you pay extra for with a landline. And those packages often cost significantly less than a bare-bones PSTN line.

Other advantages for businesses include low-cost numbers and the ability to have a second phone number that is local to a different area than the one where you're physically located.

VoIP security issues
VoIP traffic is subject to the same security risks as other IP packets that go across the Internet. Likewise, the same security solutions apply. Companies can encrypt VoIP traffic to protect the confidentiality of calls, and physical access to VoIP equipment should be restricted just as physical access to your network's servers and workstations are.

Summary
Given the advantages and disadvantages, it's obvious that VoIP is an excellent choice for second and subsequent phone lines. But do you dare cut the telco cord completely for your small business? We suggest you keep a landline when you sign up for a VoIP service, at least for a while. That will allow you to evaluate just how often you find yourself using the landline and what you need to use it for.

If there are certain business associates whose phones just don't seem compatible with your VoIP service, or you're locked into a security alarm contract with a company that doesn't support VoIP, or you're concerned about not having phone service when the power goes out and don't have a mobile phone as a backup, it makes sense to continue to maintain a PSTN line. On the other hand, if you find that VoIP works for everything you need to do, you can save your small business a nice chunk of change by replacing that landline with a second VoIP line.