VoIP system success depends on more than just new phones

Businesses of all sizes are looking for ways to save money and VoIP systems are becoming an increasingly popular option. Worldwide VoIP revenue is expected to surpass $2.5 billion by the end of 2012 according to a recent Visiongain market study. Budget focus and increased smartphone usage of employees have backed the growing phone system market.

However, implementing a VoIP system takes much more than just plugging new hardware into the existing infrastructure. An effective internet-based phone set-up requires a number of factors to be taken into account. Everything from data and networking solutions, wireless signal strength and cabling solutions can impact the quality of a VoIP solution.

The benefit of partnering with an experienced telecommunication provider when deploying a new phone system is important to catch all of these potential pitfalls. The city of Round Rock, Texas, is learning this the hard way.

Following the implementation of a VoIP solution in the summer of 2011, instead of a simpler communication option, the city experienced a number of hardware and software issues including dropped calls, voicemail problems, syncing failures, dysfunctional integration and software crashes. The problems were so severe, the city is suing the provider.

City officials are insisting that lack of knowledge from the technicians is to blame for the problems, a claim the provider has confirmed. While it is not known what areas of the deployment were overlooked, any number of factors could attribute to the poor performance of the system.

Businesses in Ohio that are interested in investing in a VoIP option should consider partnering with an IT consulting firm prior to audit an existing infrastructure to ensure it can handle the new technology.

From our offices in Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland, PRO OnCall is your single-source technology consulting service, offering managed IT support, unified communications solutions and on-call IT support.