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With inflation soaring in the UK, consumers and businesses alike are looking for ways to reduce their expenditure. One area all companies should take a close look at is their telephony, as for most, switching from legacy technologies such as ISDN to VoIP can bring huge savings. This post explains the core principles of Voice over IP before explaining exactly how you can save money with it.
What is VoIP?
VoIP is an acronym for Voice over Internet Protocol, for many years, businesses have relied on the traditional technologies of PSTN and ISDN, but with BT announcing they will switch off both of these networks in 2025, companies and consumers alike will need to find an alternative. VoIP is that alternative, and thankfully, there are tons of benefits to switching to it, not least the cost savings it provides.
How does VoIP work?
With a VoIP phone, your voice is converted by business software into digital bits and bytes that can be transferred across the internet. All you need to make VoIP calls is some software, so many of the best providers offer desktop softphones and mobile apps that can be used in conjunction or instead of traditional desk phones. As we’ll explain, this is one of the areas where businesses stand to save, as you don’t have to invest in handsets for each person.
Image source: T2k VoIP
Image Source: T2k VoIP
How to Reduce the Cost of Your Business Telecoms?
This section will explain the main ways you can save money with a VoIP telephone system. Before we get started, we should point out that far from only providing cost savings, VoIP also brings a raft of additional benefits and will usually give businesses far more functionality and flexibility. VoIP phone calls are cheap.
Most of the leading VoIP providers will give you free calls when you sign up; in many companies, these free call allowances are more than sufficient, meaning there are almost no call charges. For example, Gamma Horizon (which can be purchased via a partner, such as T2k) includes 2000 free UK landline minutes and 2000 free UK mobile minutes per user per month!
Your team needs to make many calls before you even think about paying anything extra. Not only do you get lots of free calls, but if you do end up paying for some, you’ll find business rates are low and international calls, in particular, are much cheaper.
There’s no expensive hardware to maintain
With VoIP, you typically sign up for a cloud-based service, meaning all of the processing and management of your calls takes place elsewhere. Gone are the days of needing to buy an expensive telephone system and paying to have it maintained; with VoIP, you get a fully managed service, so all you need to worry about is the ongoing monthly service fees.
You don’t have to use handsets
As we mentioned earlier, one of the benefits of a business VoIP phone system is that you don’t have to have desk handsets; your team can rely instead on desktop-based softphones or use a mobile app. While, on the face of it, this may seem relatively minor, the cost savings can add up, especially if you’re running a big team with lots of extensions.
You’ll need less office cabling
In most offices in the UK, there will be two networks, one for the computers and another for the phones, but with VoIP, you only need one. As calls are made over the data network, you won’t need to install or maintain a separate one for phones.
You won’t even need to run extra cables to desks, as most of the best VoIP handsets have a network passthrough, meaning your phone connects to the network and the computer to the phone.
Work from anywhere
The final cost saving we want to draw your attention to is that you can work from anywhere with VoIP, so long as you have an internet connection. Employees can simply plug a handset into the internet and make calls or use the desktop or mobile apps we’ve spoken about.
The cost-saving part of this is that you no longer need to pay to forward calls to people when they’re out of the office, nor do you need to cover employee mobile charges while they’re working from home. With VoIP, your team can take the business phone system anywhere.
How to find out more about VoIP?
If you’ve read this article and are keen to find out more about how VoIP can benefit your business or speak to someone about making the switch, please head over to the T2k website with tons of guides and of course details on how to get in touch.