VoIP technology has been gaining popularity by leaps and bounds over the past few years. As quality has improved and the technology has propagated, choices have become abundant. Like anything highly technical, when there are lots of choices it can be daunting for the average person to understand what they need and pros and cons of the various solutions.
There are many resources on the web that can help you. One is Voip-Pricer.com. Voip-Pricer has some nice white papers that explain the basic features of hosted VoIP phone service. Their Small Business VoIP Service Providers Buyer’s Guide is a clear, concise primer on the new hosted PBX environment. They also have a Service Provider Comparison chart that makes it easy for you to compare nine of the more popular VoIP provides. The charts assessment on each provider might be a bit optimistic, but overall it’s pretty honest and does give some negative warnings about some service providers.
VoIP-Pricer also has a nice section dealing with residential VoIP service.
Another resource is InstantVoIPQuotes.com. Here you can get quotes from multiple VoIP providers. There are also more white papers dealing with bandwidth. I found the “How to Shop for Bandwidth” and the Bandwidth Comparison Guide white papers very useful, though they completely neglect cable ISP’s and Verizon’s FiOS service. I would also disagree with their assertion that the type of bandwidth, DSL, T1, etc, is not that important. I have found that DSL especially is far less reliable then most other types of Internet connectivity.
With all the confusion surrounding VoIP services, these are welcome resources that can help the novice buyer get started.
Comment Preview