During these pandemic times, Louisa Voice has been studying small enterprise monthly phone bills to explore ways of helping clients save money by moving their voice services to VoIP. The enterprise clients had either standalone voice servers with 8-25 phones or hosted VoIP solutions from a cloud VoIP provider with a similar number of phones. We conclude that with the right upfront planning, many clients can save 50% or more on their monthly phone bills by moving to VoIP for connectivity to the public voice network. Let’s walk through two small enterprise examples.
Louisa Voice is working with a small manufacturing firm that has a legacy voice solution with 9 analog lines from a local carrier for connectivity to the public voice network. Because the analog lines are delivered as a tariffed service from the carrier, they pay $152 per month for 9 lines and another $132 in usage charges for 3000 incoming and outgoing minutes. Add in Federal, State, local, and 911 taxes and their monthly bill averages over $500 per month. VoIP connectivity to the public voice network can be procured from alternate Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs) at under $0.01 per minute including taxes. For 3000 minutes, this manufacturing firm can reduce their monthly phone expenses from $500 to $30, representing a savings of $270 per month or $5,640 annually. Putting a gateway in front of the existing PBX that converts analog signals to VoIP packets or replacing the existing system with a new VoIP solution makes good economic sense.
Another example is a mortgage company with 12 hosted VoIP phones who lease everything from their ITSP, including IP Phones, switch, firewall, and Internet access. The case study is found here https://www.louisavoice.com/index.php/2020/05/22/mortgage-company-projected-savings/. By moving to a premise-based VoIP solution, this mortgage company can reduce their monthly phone expenses from $700 to under $150 which includes their Internet connectivity.
Besides reduced monthly voice costs, another advantage of using VoIP phones and services in small enterprises is simplified cabling, particularly when moving into a new facility. VoIP phones, unlike digital or analog phones, use ethernet cabling and can also be powered over ethernet using newer switches that support this capability. All VoIP phones now have a second ethernet port built into the phone, allowing computers to be daisy-chained off the phone. Technicians wiring buildings now only run ethernet cables to where computers and phones are located, avoiding the installation of separate cables to support digital or analog phones.
Louisa Voice offers free assessments of your enterprise voice network and can outline different options for cost-reducing your monthly phone expenses that re-use your existing voice equipment or replaces it with a leading-edge VoIP solution. Contact us at info@louisavoice.com or go to www.louisavoice.com.