VOIP Phones & Networks

VOIP Phones, also known as Internet phones or SIP Phones, are phones or phone systems that use the Internet, rather than a traditional phone line to make and receive phone calls.

All you need is a reliable Internet connection, and off you go. It shouldn’t matter if you’re at the office, at home or in McDonalds (other fast food chains are available).

We’ve seen and heard of businesses being sold ‘special Internet connections’ which have been segmented to provide each phone extension with its dedicated channel to the Internet. Based on our experience with our own VOIP systems, this isn’t required. Think about it for a second, the point of VOIP, is that it works from anywhere, so how can you expect your home or Costa Coffee to have the required special Internet connection? It seems like nonsense, to us at least, that does.

If you have an office, where there are over ten or so people, and they want to use physical handsets on their desks, you should keep the phones on their own network, with their own Internet connection. This keeps the network traffic separate, which should mean things are reliable for both the phones and the computers going about their day-to-day Internet-based tasks. If you’re using software or softphones on your computers, this does not apply, you can simply have one network with one Internet connection. The bonus is redundancy, if you have two Internet connections, from separate providers. If the computer’s Internet connection goes down, you could all use the phone system Internet connection for example.

If you have less than ten people in your office with handsets, then it probably doesn’t warrant having a dedicated network for the phones. In this scenario, it’s important to check that your Internet router is compatible with the phones and that it can reliably provide services to them. This can be, and should be tested in advance of deploying or committing to the entire rollout of the VOIP phones.

Overall, not being tied to physical handsets, is the best approach. This gives you true working from anywhere, on any Internet connection using a software-based phone, or an App. If your VOIP provider, can’t provide you with a software-based phone or doesn’t support this, you should talk to other VOIP providers that can.

Again, to drive home the point here, a good VOIP service works from anywhere, on any Internet connection without the need for the router to be reconfigured. You should be able to use your phone at the office, at home or from that coffee shop around the corner, without a problem.

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions. Based in Redditch, they provide much more than just IT Support. His VOIP phone works at the office, at home and on his mobile phone via an App. Just like that.