Ease of setup and inexpensive subscription rates are among the key factors driving the growth of VoIP services worldwide. This is most strongly reflected among residential consumers, who make up 69 percent of the worldwide market.
But businesses looking to expand are also looking for an IP-based voice solution that will grow with them yet remain cost-effective. That's driving growth in areas like SIP trunking--to the tune of a 143 percent increase in revenues in 2010, says Infonetics Research--but also creating a niche market of affordable business-grade options for SMBs.
That's where managed IP PBX services come in. Hosted services grew 20 percent last year as more businesses looked for ways to get expanded voice options at a lower cost.
But hidden among all the rosy news on hosted business VoIP are more than a few thorns.
Hosted PBX solves many of the problems involved in managing a VoIP connection locally, taking some of the burden off the IT department. In theory, IT guys no longer have to spend time tracking down problems with voice latency or network shutdowns, and they don't have to be as mindful of any processes eating up bandwidth needed by the local IP-based voice network. This should free up the IT department to concentrate on numerous other issues they face daily in keeping an organization's computer network up and running.
Once the IP-based phone system's management moves off-premise, however, the IT director isn't completely unburdened. Tom Adkins of Tele-Source Ind. Inc. recently pointed out weaknesses that both hosted and on-premise VoIP can experience:
- Security: Maintaining the integrity of the voice system during and after migration to a managed service.
- Equipment: VoIP phones installed on-premise can and do break; power surges can take out the phones, etc.
- Outside network issues: Distortions of signal or dropped signals due to a carrier on the public Internet or along the WAN, or a broadband or SIP trunk signal outage at the carrier CO (central office).
- Colocated networks: With many businesses opting for hosted services for both their IT and voice, often colocated, there's the risk that a change made on the IT side of the network will profoundly affect quality on the voice side of the network.
- Sharing bandwidth: When voice and data share a single feed into a business office, IT has to stay on top of the network setup so that one technology does not hog all the bandwidth.
- Will the company have a designated contact with VoIP expertise to maintain quality of service and help the SMB solve problems that crop up on its side?
- Is an element management service in place that will notify either the SMB's IT department or the host that an equipment problem is occurring on premise?
- What contingency is in place should the VoIP system fail--such as a failover to a designated POTS line on premise?
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