Phones as they are have been around forever. Sure, we’ve got fancy voice recognition at the end of the phone lines, and cell phones have all kinds of crazy things you can do on them. I’m talking about landlines though. Landlines for big companies, or even an average business. Most every business needs high speed internet to survive. Looking up orders, helping customers see your website, adding to or changing your website, it is hard to do on dialup any more. Since you’ve already got high speed, wouldn’t it make sense to use VOIP? VOIP is voice over IP, or an internet phone. Once you’ve plugged it in, it works the same as your normal phone, you hear a dial tone, you make and receive calls just like normal. The only difference is, you’re not relying on an actual phone line now for your calls. Everything is done through your internet.

This is one way to “stick it to the phone company” as I hear so many people say. But it could actually be the way of the future. Everywhere across the nation, fiber optic lines are being put in, or lit up. A lot of times normal phone conversations are transfered to fiber optic already. I have had some trouble with VOIP, especially when there are internet problems, but it seems pretty great. The best thing is that it is usually much lower than your current phone bill. I don’t know yet, but I think VOIP will eventually replace normal landlines as we have them now. And while you’re dong your phones over the internet, if you’ve got multiple locations you should be doing video conferencing as well. Video conferencing helps keep your teams connected to each other. It helps them get the work done a lot easier.