Hype is a beautiful thing if it’s working in your favour. And for broadband phone service providers, it is.
The hype says that broadband phone services (and the VoIP technology behind them) are going to revolutionize the telephony industry. And the hype says that broadband phone services are a cheap alternative to “traditional” phone services, ideal for consumers and small businesses looking to lop their communications costs. And besides, broadband phones are just plain hot.
The problem with hype is that it’s often divorced from fact. The idea that broadband phone services are ideal for small businesses is a case in point. Given the current state of affairs, for most small businesses switching to broadband phone services makes no sense – or even cents.
1. Broadband phones still don’t deliver the quality of traditional telephony services.
Garbled or lost phrases, clipped sentences, distortion – these are all still common experiences for broadband phone users. If you’re using a phone for business purposes, you need the kind of superior sound quality that lets everyone on the call hear everything clearly all the time, the kind of sound quality that your landline phone provides.
2. Broadband phones don’t yet have the reliability that small businesses require.
Similarly, businesses need their phone services to have one hundred percent reliability – or as close to that as they can get. With broadband phone services, if you lose your Internet connection, you’ve lost your phone service. And if the power goes out and you are dependent on a broadband phone, you have no phone. That’s not the case with a landline phone.
3. What’s the point to picking another area code for small businesses?
Broadband phone service providers often advertise the ability to pick an area code somewhere else in the country as a big advantage. But most small businesses operate locally. If you choose an area code somewhere else, then all the locals who call your business are then forced to make long distance phone calls to reach you. Where’s the sense in that?
4. Broadband phone service savings may be non-existent or insignificant.
With most broadband phone services, calls are free between users of the same service. But ask yourself how many of your customers, clients, suppliers and others that you call regularly are currently using broadband phone service – and what the chances are that they’re all using the same one. Your small business might not be able to take advantage of these free calls at all.
You also need to ask yourself how many long distance calls your business makes. While broadband service providers such as Primus and Vonage both offer a selection of broadband phone service plans that offer unlimited calling within Canada and the U.S. for a monthly fee (see URL Are Broadband Phone services For You? for a comparison of several plans from each company), it still may not make sense to switch if your business doesn’t make a lot of long distance calls.
Note, too, that broadband phone service providers do not offer “unlimited long distance”. You will still need a long distance plan for international calls. And many broadband phone service providers charge additional fees for added features and activation fees, which will all erode your potential savings from switching to a broadband phone.
Broadband phone services are better than they’ve ever been, and for some small businesses, particularly those that make a lot of long distance calls, getting broadband phone services can be a smart move economically, although they should hold on to their landlines. For many other small businesses, however, the best approach to broadband phone services is to ignore the hype and wait until the quality and reliability of broadband phones improves.
