Everything you want to know about Business Telephony

There are several ways to bring business telephony to your company. In this article we will take a step-by-step look at the options available and the differences between them.

Business Telephony Formerly

A company used to have an office with a physical telephone switchboard. The engineer would connect a fixed line to this switchboard. This gave you a business phone number and you could make and receive calls. However, all phones had to be in the same building as the switchboard to make and receive calls.

Business Telephony Now

All countries in Europe have a broadband connection to the home or office. There is enough bandwidth to make good, stable voice connections over the Internet connection. A special protocol has also been developed to transport voice over the Internet: VoIP. This stands for Voice over IP.

Fixed phones are being adapted to this new way of making business calls: VoIP phones are introduced.

These VoIP phones register with the online switchboard of a VoIP provider. The VoIP provider issues the business phone number and one or more VoIP accounts so that the VoIP phones can log on to the online PBX. This is the new business telephony.

The telephone connection is made over the internet. A physical switchboard is no longer needed. It also no longer matters whether the phones are in 1 or more physical locations. If there is a good Internet connection, a stable VoIP connection can be established between the VoIP phones and the VoIP PBX. This allows business calls to be made over the internet via the online PBX.

This is also supported by legislation in European countries: net neutrality is mandatory and Internet providers should not compromise on quality based on the protocol used on the Internet connection.

There should also be no price discrimination as a result of this legislation. Voice traffic should be treated and charged the same as normal web traffic. Video traffic should also be treated in the same way as normal web traffic.

Meanwhile, telephony vendors are all making their telephony solutions VoIP ready. New pricing models are emerging for business telephony with unlimited calls, and new terms such as hosted telephony or cloud telephony are emerging, meaning that the telephone exchange is now fully managed in the business provider's data centre.

Hosted VOIP Telephony

Hosted VoIP is the new form of business telephony.

Depending on the platform used by the chosen VoIP provider, there are telephony solutions for every industry and target group. The current telephone exchange can be replaced by VoIP telephony. This will be accelerated by the end of ISDN: the old fixed telephony network.

For business telephony, it is now necessary to choose Business VoIP.

SIP Trunk

Large businesses choose this telephony solution where they can continue to use the PBX installed in the office. They set up a SIP trunk over the Internet connection between the business telephony provider and their own local PBX, which provides the telephony functionality.

So even though the traffic is already being delivered digitally via VoIP, the PBX remains the same and people can be reached in the best possible way.

This is a second telephony solution where businesses can use a SIP trunk to deliver traffic to wherever they choose: the office or their own data centre.

Number portability

When switching to a new form of business telephony, the law ensures that this can be done without problems: existing telephone numbers must be transferred from the current provider to the new provider. This ensures that the landline number can be reached and that the company remains accessible to its existing customers. The same applies to mobile numbers.

There is also a third business telephony solution: the fixed-to-mobile option.

Fixed to Mobile

This is where a business number is forwarded to the entrepreneur's mobile phone. There are 2 types of fixed to mobile: routing calls to a softphone installed on the mobile, or routing calls to the mobile itself without installing any software.

We prefer fixed to mobile without the need to install a softphone. This way, calls are always received correctly and you are always available. Business telephony and mobile telephony have become 1. Customers find this telephony solution ideal, especially in the start-up phase of a company or if there are 2-3 of you and you are on the road a lot.

The advantages of choosing a Cloud VOIP subscription from Belfabriek:

- All useful (optional) features such as call recording, selection menu and queue are included free of charge.
- Easy-to-use app for both Android and iOS
- No new hardware or phones required
- All kinds of easy to remember phone numbers easily registered (e.g. Germany, Netherlands, USA, UK)