Technology has reshaped almost every aspect of day-to-day life. For a business, landline phones are increasingly looking like an example of yesterday’s technology. Landlines are often tied into old-fashioned contracts and upfront connection costs. That makes it difficult to unlock real value for money. Today’s companies need speed, flexibility, and scalability.
Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) provides another option for businesses looking to break the shackles of traditional telephony. It allows them to harness the power of the internet and eliminate the restrictions of outdated infrastructure.
Companies across industries are increasingly wising up to the potential of VoIP. The global VoIP market will be worth $140 billion by 2021. What is it that’s making so many firms now opt for a VoIP landline over traditional telephony?
Below you’ll find five of the main reasons to ditch your traditional landline for a VoIP phone system:
- Lower Costs
- Additional Features
- Mobility & Flexibility
- Scalability
- Future Proof
How a VoIP landline phone excels in all the above areas will be explained at length below. First, it’s essential to explain the difference between VoIP and traditional landlines.
How a VoIP Landline is Different From a Traditional Office Phone
VoIP offers an alternative way to traditional contracts to make and receive phone calls. With a VoIP home phone or VoIP at work, your calls no longer rely on the conventional infrastructure. Instead, a VoIP landline uses your internet connection for your calls.
Audio signals – the voices of those speaking on a call – are first packaged as digital data. The audio signals are then transmitted via your internet connection like any other data. At the other end of the call, they’re unpacked. The information is then combined with the other packets of information and turned into audio.
From the point of view of a person making or receiving calls, things won’t feel any different. A VoIP landline phone can look and behave like a traditional handset. With a fast and reliable enough internet connection, call quality will also be the same.
More businesses and homes now have reliable internet connections. That means that VoIP uptake is soaring. An increasing number of households are choosing a VoIP home phone over traditional landlines. It’s still in business, however, where the potential of VoIP is the most significant.
A VoIP landline phone in your office represents a step into a new era of connectivity. VoIP has a raft of advantages over traditional telephony. The following are just five of the main ones. Together, they present a compelling case for why you should ditch your landline for VoIP.
VoIP Can Help Lower Costs
When you’re in business, your bottom line matters. Anything that can save you money is something you need to consider. Traditional landline phones are costly commitments. To keep your communications stack running, you need to pay for equipment, software, and frequent maintenance. With traditional telephony, costs can ramp up at pace.
You have to pay line rental for each line your firm uses. Take BT’s small business line rental charges, for instance. They vary in price from £17 to £20.74 per month, depending on how many lines you need. For a business in need of plenty, that cost can really ramp up. Long-distance or international calls often also come at a premium. A call to an international number can often cost well over 50p per minute, even on a good business tariff.
Additional features or functions for your telephone system are other things which don’t tend to come cheap. You may have to pay for things like call queuing or setting up a Private Branch Exchange (PBX). That’s on top of what can be hefty setup fees for the basic system itself.
With a VoIP landline, you transfer all your everyday communications functions into the online world. That way, you can pay for them through a predictable and convenient monthly fee. Setup is simpler, and fees for rental of separate lines are a thing of the past. That’s not to mention the fact that international calls no longer incur excess charges.
Take for example the below pricing plans from RingCentral:
You can select whichever plan suits your business needs. All your calling and communications are then covered by a simple and predictable monthly fee. You no longer have to worry about line rental, long distance calls or anything else exploding your monthly bills.
Most VoIP providers also offer maintenance as part of their service. You don’t have to worry about paying for extra staff to keep your phone systems running smoothly. Additionally, many companies see cost savings throughout their organisation. That’s thanks to increased employee productivity. The features offered by VoIP let staff handle calls whenever and wherever they need to.
Additional Features
Most VoIP providers offer telephony as part of a package of communications features. Your company can access affordable solutions that would be difficult to use on a traditional landline. Employees can choose whether they want to make calls from a softphone on their laptop. They can even have calls sent to their smartphone when they’re out of the office.
A VoIP landline also presents the opportunity to leverage a unified communications solution. Beyond flexibility, such a system can include a range of extra features. Call forwarding, call screening, and even voicemail to email services all become possibilities as do a variety of admin and collaboration alternatives.
Cloud PBX can make internal office communications simpler and cheaper. Call logs and automatic call recording are also often available. All of this is part and parcel of a VoIP landline phone system. That makes it simple for firms to track their staff’s communications.
These are just the tip of the iceberg of extra features VoIP systems can offer. With a VoIP landline setup, it’s quick and easy to add or activate any new feature you wish. There isn’t the upheaval or cost that would result from upgrading a traditional system.
Mobility & Flexibility
You don’t need to be an industry innovator to see that the modern workplace is evolving. For many businesses, the office is a “virtual” location. Employees are relying on the latest software to keep them connected whether they’re working at home or on-the-move.
A VoIP landline phone or even a VoIP home phone is something of a misnomer. VoIP doesn’t tie you to any one physical handset or workstation. VoIP cloud-based connections allow today’s organisations to embrace the rising demand for remote work.
What your employees need to connect to your system has changed. If they have a secure Wi-Fi connection, a softphone, a desk phone or even a mobile, they’re away. Your staff can log in to their ‘phones’ from any shared handset or workstation. They can tap an app on their mobile and make or receive calls as if they’re in the office.
That level of flexibility is crucial to many modern businesses. In sectors such as real estate sales or lettings, the staff is always on the move. The flexibility to make and receive calls anywhere can make a huge difference. For example, when Platinum Estates adopted a cloud-based telephone system from RingCentral they saved money and improved overall efficiency.
Scalability
Traditional telephony systems tend to be static and unchanging. It’s difficult and expensive to get such a system to grow and evolve along with your business. There’s lots of hassle and expense involved in adding extra phone lines to your office. That’s not to mention how complicated things can get if you add new premises.
Things are different with VoIP. It makes scaling far easier, freeing you up to take your firm to the next level. Either by expanding into multiple locations or adding new people to your team. As your service is available in the cloud, you can add or remove extra lines in your system whenever you need to. There’s no need to purchase additional capacity when you don’t need it.
There’s also no uncertainty involved in choosing the right size of the phone system. Adjust according to your needs as your business evolves. Add a new VoIP Landline phone to a new office, and you can still call using your existing numbers. Introduce new call forwarding rules, so callers reach the right people even if you’ve moved departments around or made staffing changes.
Future Proof
One of the most important reasons why you need to adopt a VoIP landline is to future proof your communications. IP communications are the future of business telephony. It has a simple plug-and-play format, as well as being able to protect your firm against common landline disruptions. VoIP systems can prepare your organisation for the trends of the future.
What this graph reveals is that businesses and individuals are searching for more dependable, high-quality communications solutions. If you want to be relevant in the years ahead, now’s the time to switch to VoIP.
The VoIP market is growing and diversifying. If you want your firm to meet the challenges of business communication moving forward, you only have one choice. Switching to a VoIP landline now can help future proof your company. Make sure you don’t get left behind.
Originally published Jun 02, 2020, updated Jan 16, 2023
