– Chris Maxwell, Director of Labs at Voxeo (www.voxeo.com), says:
Negotiate.
When shopping for phone services don’t be afraid to ask for better billing terms or lower rates. There may be excellent rates for special features, such as native VoIP outbound calling. VoIP-originated traffic typically falls outside traditional PSTN tariff structures and qualifies as “Enhanced Service Provider,” available at cheaper rates. Many savvy providers have responded to this economic environment and are also offering flexible pricing models. It doesn’t hurt to ask!
Consider Using Your Existing Phone Lines.
There are devices such as Media Gateways and Analog Telephone Adapters (ATA’s) that serve as converters from analog phone lines to SIP-based VoIP lines. This allows companies to keep their current telephone provider, infrastructure, and phone numbers while serving VoIP to local and remote locations using ATA’s. In fact, if you have a Wide Area Network (WAN) between two offices it’s possible to bring in calls to a single location, convert the calls to VoIP, and send the calls to remote locations via SIP to be answered by remote employees. This can all be done via ATA’s and dedicated network connections.
