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Are you really saving that much on telephony costs by using VoIP?
We all know that VoIP is supposed to be cheaper - that's what draws a lot of people to it. However, the cost of both TDM landline and mobile calling keeps falling, and the spread isn't what it used to be. No doubt there are scenarios where the savings for VoIP are substantial, but is this now the exception instead of the norm? What has your experience been?
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5 Answers
I would agree with Todd. I live in Michigan and, as we all know, people in this state are not throwing away money on technology for the sake of technology. They're only making changes that affect their bottom line.
Over 90% of the companies I work with move to VoIP to save money. They accomplish this mainly by:
1. Transitioning from TDM lines
2. Consolidating lines to a few sites
3. Utilizing existing T1s or MPLS networks to push voice traffic over existing networks and eliminating local lines in the process.
4. Reducing or eliminating costs of remote employee POTS lines
There are all kinds of efficiencies that can be had by implementing call accounting, call center applications, IVRs or voice recognition. Most of these use a VoIP system as the foundation.
*Note: By VoIP, I don't necessarily mean VoIP phones. They can be digital phones but be based on a VoIP platform to enable the integration of these technologies.
Yes, absolutely. Mobile phones are not going to be the bread and butter that you run a business off of, at least not in the actual office. Land lines traditionally run $25-50 a month. Yet, VOIP can run as little as $12 a month and maybe as high as $35 a month. SIP costs are coming down as well.
Long distance rates with SIP are considerably less as well in the cases I have seen.
When I work with customers, I can generally put in a new VOIP system that runs on VOIP lines that actually saves a customer money on the lease of the equipment, the new lines and installation versus the maintenance on the old system and their existing lines.
We haven't even touched on productivity tools. Remote workers with remote phones, reduced cell phone minutes with VOIP connections in hotels, overseas, etc. Find me - follow me features, conference servers, video conferencing, and the list goes on. Many of these features just aren't available in the old legacy equipment, and are truly enabled by VOIP. Most importantly, Session Initialization Protocol (SIP) which is the standard driving all of this.
Remember, the savings you are not realizing today, by putting of a change to SIP, will never be recovered, it's a sunken investment in old technology.
I don't agree, the cost of landline calls is falling so fast that many providers are leaving the VOIP market (such as Tesco in the UK, who have just abandoned their "foot in the water" approach).
Sure you can use digital telephony for an internal VOIP arrangement but the actual numbers involved are not huge savings anymore and in many cases the cost of transition outweighs the benefits.
The pundits have positioned VoIP as a way to save money since the technology first emerged more than a decade ago. It can provide companies with some significant benefits. Making moves, adds, and changes becomes simpler than working with a TDM system – although they have improved recently. Also, the idea of consolidating voice and data communications can help companies lower their infrastructure costs. In addition, they can simply management of their networks. VoIP systems can support emerging applications, such as instant messaging.
However, the big issue has always been the upfront costs. A company has to invest in new hardware. The VoIP handset are typically quite expensive, costs a few hundred dollars each. In addition, many firms find they have to upgrade their network infrastructure. While data networks can handle issues, such as latency, they create problems with voice networks. This is becoming more of an issue with the emergence of more video applications. Many companies overprovision their networks and add more bandwidth. Consequently in large companies with at least 1,000 users, the initial costs to move to VoIP can be $1 million or more.
So, the business case is not the No Brainer that the vendors often portray, and there have been many corporations who were astonished when they tallied up the final bill from their movement to VoIP. Consequently, companies often find that the best time to make the move is at the end of PBX life cycle. In those instances, they would need to make a significant investment anyway. However, these systems have long life cycles, so a company may have to wait a while before a clear business case emerges. In sum, it is not as easy to justify these deployments as some may think.
Well, just as I suspected - there's support for both sides. We're just talking about landline here - let's leave wireless aside for now. For the low end of the SMB market, I'm sure VoIP can save enough money to make it worthwhile, esp where they do a lot of overseas calling. However, if more of your LD is domestic, then I don't think VoIP is that economical - incumbents pretty much give this away now.
The other area where VoIP could save you big money is if you're currently spending a fortune for a la carte features like call display or voicemail. These can really add up, and most of these are included with the flat rate fees that most VoIP offerings charge.
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