NFIB

Centralize Your Remote Locations Through an IP Phone System
09/ 04/ 2002

by Vicki Gerson

Telephone systems are available today that allow small to mid-size companies with employees in remote locations to connect to the company as if they were in the main office, allowing them to:

Contact and be contacted by other employees, using only their extensions, as if they were in the same office;

Participate in conference calls without paying for extra services;

Make use of centralized company-negotiated long distance rates.

Using the Internet, smaller companies can now do what large companies have been able to do for years with private networks. Using Internet Protocol (IP), the telephone system links separate geographic locations together into a single phone system.

"A number of significant benefits are possible with an IP telephone system," says Don Bloom, president, Donald Bloom & Associates, Inc., a Northbrook, Ill.-based consulting firm that focuses on communication technologies. "A formerly isolated worker in a remote office can now take advantage of the larger central office's long distance rates simply by picking up their phone. The phone may be in their office -- but the dial-tone is in the main office."

So why isn't everyone doing this? You need reliable bandwidth--the communication channel to the Internet--that is consistently fast enough to keep the conversation from sounding like a bad cell phone connection. Many Internet Service Providers are now changing the way they handle voice connections vs. data to give voice priority, so sound quality is maintained. Until all of them do that, there is always the risk that call quality will suffer. However, if you need to centralize your remote locations, IP Telephony is worth investigating.

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