What is SIP Trunking? Part 3 – The Benefits for Small Business

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Netcelerate

Netcelerate Advantage

Any small business will be looking to reduce costs as much as possible while being able to reach the largest number of potential customers possible. SIP trunking can achieve both of these, increasing the amount of money you can use on the rest of your business.

Unlike PRIs offering a fixed number of 23 channels (or lines), SIP Trunking gives the business freedom to choose how many trunks they would like to use. As such, you no longer need to oversubscribe and pay for lines that will only be used during peak times!

Due to the high costs of Integrated Services Digital networks (ISDN) (especially in Canada), small and medium size businesses could not afford to deploy PRI technology into their voice networks. The only viable options for them was to use analog lines which offer quite limited functionality. SIP trunks, with lower access and usage costs than analog lines deliver unmatched functionality allowing SMB customers to deploy solutions only available to large corporation in the past.

By making the switch from your traditional network to a SIP-based system, you are able to achieve the following benefits as a small business:

Pooling your channels across multiple locations, avoiding the need to pay for services at each site.
Having multiple phone numbers go to one SIP trunk, saving money on phone lines and increasing your reach to customers.
Remove the need for toll-free numbers by having local numbers across Canada that will all reach your system as a local call.

There are many benefits of SIP trunking for any size of business. These are three prominent one, but to learn more, click here.

Understanding Hosted PBX

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Netcelerate

Outside of the IT world, terms like Hosted PBX are still a mystery to many small business owners. More easily understood are applications like Skype, and even the term VoIP. To understand how VoIP plays a role in business telephone systems, we’ll be exploring the basics of a Hosted PBX system, beginning with the meaning of a PBX.

What is a PBX?

PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange which is a piece of hardware (telephone box) that makes connections among the internal telephones of a business and connects them to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) or public telephone network. This is done via trunk lines, otherwise known as phone lines. A PBX can incorporate multiple telephones, fax machines, modems and more, and the term extension is used to refer to any end point on the branch. Extensions are also commonly referred to as the 3 or 4 digit number associated with an individual telephone within the business phone system. For example, your telephone number might be 613-355-1234 extension 123. Depending on the configuration of your PBX, you can transfer phone calls between extensions and reach extensions individually through the Auto Attendant: the automated greeting played to callers when they first call in to your business.

The Hosted in Hosted PBX

A hosted PBX >> provides all of the same functions (and many more) as a PBX however the system is delivered as a service. This means you can eliminate the need to buy and install a physical PBX (phone box) since the hosted PBX is provided and managed by your service provider. Instead of buying a PBX, installing and configuring it, with a hosted PBX system you are only required to purchase telephones and have an internet connection. Not only will your business save money by eliminating the need to buy a PBX, but it’s estimated that yearly updates and repairs can cost between 10-20% per year of the original purchase price of the traditional PBX. With a hosted PBX system, updates are managed by the service provider without additional cost to the customer. This is only one of the ways in which the longevity of a hosted PBX system can benefit your business.

Longevity and Scalability

Any type of investment in telecommunications or IT can impact how you operate your business and can impact your business for years to come. A major benefit to a hosted PBX telephone system is its ability to grow with your business; meaning telephones and phone lines can quickly and cost effectively be added or removed from your system whenever you need them. To read more about the benefits of hosted PBX, read Why Companies are Switching to Hosted PBX >>

Series: Specialty Configurations for your Hosted PBX

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Netcelerate

Part One: Real Estate
In this series, we’ll be exploring how you can make the most of your new business phone system with our specialty configurations that have been tested and proven by our customers in their respective industries.
In the first post of this series, we’ll be discussing the Hosted PBX phone system currently in use by Century 21 in Ottawa, Canada and how this strategy can be duplicated for your real estate business to maximize the efficiency of your phone system.

Key Communication Issues
Let’s start by examining the key communication issues faced by the real estate industry:
1. Multiple locations: multiple offices within one city or larger geographic area
2. Agents that work remotely: realtors who work from home and are constantly traveling to meet with homeowners and buyers
3. A missed call could be a missed sale: many people shy away from leaving voicemail messages. In a competitive industry, a potential seller/buyer may call another agent or another brokerage if their call goes unanswered during business hours
Continue reading →

Website Evolution and its Impact on Business

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Netcelerate

The world’s first website turned 21 this month >> encouraging us to reflect on the internet as a whole and what it has meant for the business world.

The world’s first website was created by CERN physicist Tim Berners-Lee in the Swiss Alps. The site’s original purpose was to explain just what the internet was and explained how users could create their own websites. Berners-Lee continued on to develop a number of tools necessary for the functionality of the World Wide Web and are still used today: HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML).

Today, the indexed web contains at least 8.09 billion indexed pages and continues to grow.

World Wide Web Size >>

Continue reading →

Mobile Device Management

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Netcelerate

What is Mobile Device Management?
Mobile Device Management (MDM) software secures and manages a group of mobile devices that are deployed from a service provider. MDM functionality typically includes over-the-air distribution of applications, data and configuration settings for all types of mobile devices including mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, mobile point-of-sale units and mobile printers. Not only can MDM software manage a variety of types of mobile devices, but it can also manage devices from a variety of manufacturers such as Android, Apple, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows all from a single console. MDM can apply to both company-provided and employee-owned (also referred as BYOD) devices.
So, what exactly does Mobile Device Management do? Well, with MDM in place, you can quickly enrol devices in your enterprise environment, configure and update device settings, enforce security policies, secure mobile access to corporate resources and remotely lock and wipe managed devices.

Continue reading →