Voice Over Internet For Business

[donsabe]

When a business is considering using Voice Over Internet; what issues should be considered?

[stevie21]

It's cheap but the quality of the line isn't as good as a standard phone line. Can be very crackly and prone to delays (like a long distance call).
Consider, then, if the phone is central to the business (call centre) and whether customers are likely to just not phone (loss of business) due to being made to repeat themselves constantly.
Also, if you can overcome this, will there be enough phone calls to make the investment viable? Will it save you enough money?

Will it lead to t'internet becoming overcrowded and the audio quality degrading further?

[Oneeyedvic]

Also, you will have a strange telephone number - which people with caller id may not answer and people will not ring eg 0510 1234567.

[theo_wyvern]

quality of the call will depend on bandwidth, QoS (Quality of Service, settings defined at either end of line, ie what gets priority, data or voice)

personally we had a nice big bandwidth between each of our offices so installed VoIP for internal calls and saved us a bunch of cash but retained a PSTN for external calls so number was fine and quality fine for clients etc.