Selecting a VoIP Service Provider Maine

Voice over IP is a proven technology that has been deployed by many of the largest and most successful companies around the globe. The voice quality and reliability of service is now equivalent to traditional telephone systems. Almost all of the major telecom companies are currently offering VoIP service to their residential telephone customers.

There are 2 ways to get Voice over IP telephony.

1.Own the hardware and the software (Premises).
2.Lease the Services from a VoIP Service Provider (Hosted Service).

From a technology perspective, there should not be a difference in voice quality and reliability between Premises based VoIP service and a Hosted VoIP service assuming the 2 alternatives have comparable hardware, software and internet connections.

Generally, the cost associated with owning voice over IP equipment (Premises solution) is not economically justified until the number of users is well into the thousands. This is because the cost of implementing a Premises bases VoIP requires a significant amount of upfront capital and the commitment of at least 2 full-time IT staff to support the system. The primary non-economic reason for Premises based VoIP solution is if your company has specific applications such as a CRM application that must be integrated with your VoIP system. Custom applications also require an additional commitment of staffing resources.

There are 2 types of VoIP services; Group Services and User Services. Group Services are the services that tie all of the users of a company together under a single telecommunications system. Group services are PBX features that allow you to control how calls are handled by your telephone system.

Group Services gives you the ability to easily and with no additional hardware, customize how calls are routed to and from your organization. The power of Group Services lies in its ability to unify your company's telecommunication system under a single umbrella regardless of the physical location of your offices. Home Offices can even be incorporated into your telephone system. The Auto-Attendant is an example of a Group Service. With a Voice over IP Auto-Attendant, calls can be automatically routed to any geographic location within your company. Calls can even be routed automatically transferred to a home office or a cell phone.

User Services are features of your phone system that your employees can customize to meet the unique requirements of their position within your organization. Examples of User Services include voicemail and call forwarding. AVAD Technologies service has 43 customizable User Services.