Category: Small Business VoIP FAQ’s

Here you will find information to help you better understand how VoIP works for small businesses.

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Marketing Numbers News Small Business VoIP FAQ's virion business voip phone systems VoIP Service VoIP Support

It’s Clear You Want to Port Away

Phone Numbers are no longer attached to your local Telstra exchange

port your landline number away from Telstra for VoIP business telephone systems

Many companies are moving to VoIP and enjoying the benefits of a digital telephone service and the most obvious benefit is to be able to take your phone number anywhere you want. In the olden days your telephone number was linked to the copper wire that comes into your home or office, but these days a phone number is virtual – it doesn’t matter where you are. Many larger companies have a different phone number for each state that are all answered in a central location. These days phone numbers are completely separate to the cabling that carries the voice signal.

Mobile and Landline Phone Numbers

There was a time in the early days of mobile phones where mobile phone carriers could keep a customer for many years because we didn’t want to change our phone numbers – changing carriers meant you had to change your mobile phone number! Many small business owners still believe that they need to change their landline phone number if they move their office location but that is not the case with VoIP – you can take your number with you now.

Port Away

When you move your phone number from one carrier to your new carrier it’s called Porting Away and it happens quite often. In our experience most request to port away involve those customer who want to move away from Telstra (mainly because they are a huge supplier and have most of the landline customers) and those carriers who tied customers into long-term and expensive plans (we won’t name names).

If you are interested in porting away from your existing phone number carrier just use the PAF (Porting Application Form) from our VoIP Support site.

Wholesale Account Number

When you Port Away the application form asks for the account number for the phone number you want to port away and many customers believe this number appears on the monthly phone bill, but it doesn’t. Often you’ll need to call the leaving carrier, let them know that you are porting away from them and need to get the wholesale account number for the phone number you want to port away. Once we have this information the whole process now takes half the time it use to.

Special Offer for Small Businesses

If you are ready to move your telephone system to VoIP and start saving money but also getting all the features of a digital phone system, visit our VoIP Partner website and learn how you can get a VoIP Phone System for $1 per month.

 

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News Small Business VoIP FAQ's Telephone System Features

Telstra Call Forward Immediate, on Busy and No Answer

Telstra Call Forward

Missed Call Follow-MeCall Forward is a functionality that enables you to have incoming calls diverted to alternative numbers on situations where you are away from your phone, are busy on your phone or are not in your office.

This functionality was seen as a break through a decade ago, but with the onset of VoIP and digital telephone systems this type of functionality is now available via most VoIP Cloud PBX Admin Portals and you can control more aspects of your VoIP Business Telephone System by logging into a cloud-based administration area.

Porting Away from Telstra

VoIP Business Telephone Systems have a LOT of features that you can configure yourself without the services of an expensive telephone or IT Consultant. Many customers have signed up to these Hosted Business Telephone Systems and ported away from Telstra to save money. By Porting away from Telstra you get to

  1. Keep your phone number (no matter where you move in the world!),
  2. Pay low VoIP rates for the number and calls, PLUS
  3. You can take your number with you wherever you go!

Call diversion is a function that Telstra customers can use to divert calls to their new VoIP Business Phone System until they are ready to port their number away from Telstra and we’ve written the basic instructions for how to do it below.

VoIP Business Phone System on 14 day FREE Trial

Trial a VoIP Business Phone System for your office and take advantage of great advanced call handling features like those listed below, we can help you with a VoIP Phone System on a 14-day FREE Trial. Here are some of the most desired features:

Voicemail to Email,

Auto Attendant (IVR)

VoIP Service Admin Portal, and more

The VoIP Business Telephone Systems voicemail-to-email service allows you to create your own greeting and receive messages to your own email address, no matter where you are. Telstra normally charge for their voicemail (messagebank) service, but the VoIP Business Telephone System includes this feature for each VoIP phone number.

Turning Call Forward On and Off

Below is some information we found to help our customers with the codes required to activate and deactivate the Telstra Call Forward services: Remember! Do not use brackets, but do use the asterisk (*) and hash (#) keys.

How to turn Call Forward on

Here are the basics:

The easiest way to turn on Call Forward is to call 1#, then say “Turn on Call Forward” and listen to the instructions. Alternatively, follow the instructions below to turn on each type of Call Forward.

To turn on Call Forward Immediate (all calls):
Press * 2 1 (phone number) #

To turn on Call Forward Busy:
Press * 2 4 (phone number) #

To turn on Call Forward No Answer:
Press * 6 1 (phone number) #
You can also turn on Call Forward No Answer and specify how many seconds before the call is forwarded:
Press * 6 1 (phone number) * (time in seconds) #

Cheap Business Telephone Systems from $1 per month

CloudPBX Hosted PBX Logo[box type=”tick” size=”large” style=”rounded” border=”full”]Did you know that you can have the power of a professional business telephone system and the capability to turn on features like Call Forward, Do Not Disturb etc from your VoIP Handsets?You can also have all of your team connected as part of the one business phone system even if they are spread out across Australia (or even the world)?Learn about the features of the CloudPBX..[/box]

How to turn Call Forward off

Here are the basics:

The easiest way to turn off Call Forward is to call 1#, then say “Turn off Call Forward” and listen to the instructions.

Alternatively, follow the instructions below to turn off each type of Call Forward. You can also find out how to turn Call Forward on.

To turn off Call Forward Immediate (all calls):
Press # 21 # on your keypad

To turn off Call Forward Busy:
Press # 24 # on your keypad

To turn off Call Forward No Answer:
Press # 61 # on your keypad

Turn off Call Forward Selected Callers:
Press # 92 # on your keypad

Turn off Call Forward Set the Time:
Press # 16 # on your keypad

Typical small business call flow scenarios

Business Telephone System Call Flow Configurations - smallestWe’ve put together some call flow diagrams to make it easier to choose your ideal business telephone system customisation. Combined with $1 per month for a phone system you’ll have professional features, setup quickly and at a fantastic cheap rate. See the common business telephone system setups..

Cisco, Yealink and Siemens Handsets

Small Business VoIP Telephone System HandsetsFeature-rich and professional these global brands will make your business look and feel professional and they’ll come with the power to manage the calls in your small business.

See the different VoIP Business Telephone Handsets..

Requesting a Quotation is Quick and Easy

Request a quote for cheap business phone systemIf you want to get started with VoIP, Digital and Hosted Business Telephone Systems but not sure how to get started, tell us a little bit about your circumstances and request a quote and we’ll get something back to you quickly.

You’ll be able to trial every aspect of the business telephone system, and see call rates and connectivity options.

 

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News Small Business VoIP FAQ's Voice Codecs Voice Quality

Voice Codecs for VoIP Business Telephone Systems

The Right Voice Codecs Need to be Configured

The upload speed of your broadband Internet connection is critical to ensure good quality VoIP conversations on a VoIP Business grade Telephone System. There are two main voice codecs used for voice conversations using VoIP; G.711 and G.729, with G.711 being the best quality (ideal for businesses with Tier 1 grade internet) but also taking up the most bandwidth requirements.

This diagram from the Cisco website shows the different VoIP codecs with packet information and bandwidth requirements.

voice codecs for voip phone systems

From the Cisco website

How Many Concurrent Call Conversations?

If you do a speed test of your Broadband Internet service you’ll see your upload speed and by using the table above you’ll be able to roughly gauge how many concurrent conversations you can have using a VoIP telephone system and your current Internet service.

When companies grow they’ll often have two broadband Internet services, once for data and one for voice and this ensures that the voice quality remains consistent regardless if your staff are transferring a lot of data or watching cat videos on Youtube!

Another very important aspect of your Internet services is to have it optimised so that voice traffic is given priority over data traffic. They call this Quality of Service or QoS.

VoIP Business Telephone System Handsets

Small Business VoIP Telephone System HandsetsVoIP handsets enable your small business to take advantage of the functionality and flexibility of a hosted CloudPBX. These handsets can be located in remote offices like staff or contractors homes or even interstate or international offices.

Learn more about Business Telephone System Handsets

Business Telephone System Call Flow Scenarios

Business Telephone System Call Flow Configurations - smallestDo you want to see how most people handle the calls with their business telephone system? These call flow scenarios enable you to quickly choose from the most common choices and can help you get a good solution quickly.

Business Telephone System Scenarios

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News Small Business VoIP FAQ's

What is a Fair Use Policy?

Are you looking for unlimited?

Telephony, website hosting and other services that are a commodity in today’s business world are very competitive and very technical. There are aspects of these services you use but might not understand in the beginning but they make more sense as you get to know them.

Most people love to hear the word “unlimited” because it means they can get everything they want without worrying about the price they pay for it. On the face of it you might think to yourself, yep, I’d love to take advantage of that, but what you find is that most customers use the amount an ordinary person would use. Unlimited is really a way of saying use as much as you want and don’t ever worry about it.

If we really want to get technical we would ask ourselves “who is an ordinary person”? The definition of an ordinary person in Wikipedia is the man on the Clapham Omnibus (interest read) and this ordinary person is often better off just paying for what they use. Let’s see why.

So, you want unlimited do you?

  • Would you be happy to share that unlimited with your neighbours?
  • What would happen if you and your neighbours consumed “unlimited” amounts?
  • Would there be enough for everyone?
  • Would it be fast enough?
  • Would the quality be good enough?
  • Would the supplier end up putting limits on it?

It’s rare to see anything truly unlimited. There is a reason that most “unlimited” services have a Fair Use Policy.

Where can you find this Fair Use Policy?

If a company wants you to agree with a Fair Use Policy then they should have one, right? In my search for Fair Use Policies, searched for the Fair Use Policy of an Australian subsidiary of a large United States telephone company. Do you think I could find it? When I finally noticed the Fair Use Policy link, it took me to the Terms and Condition page. On this Terms and Condition page there was a link called Fair Use Policy, but it took me back to their Terms and Condition which stated that they had a Fair Use Policy and that it was subject to change from time to time. After a few weeks I conducted the same search to find a separate link for the Terms and Condition and the Fair Use Policy, but they both had the same writing on the page. It was the Terms and Conditions! I guess most answers are all in the details.

Most Fair Use Policies state a maximum amounts,be it storage size, number of minutes, number of calls, call duration etc. A good example is a large US based Website hosting company our organisation uses. They offer 750GB of storage space with each website! Fantastic! I logged into the administration area and created an email accounts 4GB of storage so I would never run out, but guess what happened? One of our users, who doesn’t download all his emails onto his own computer, built up 600MB of emails in his email account. As a result the website hosting company de-activated his account and sent him and me an email to say there had been a violation of their Terms of Service (TOS). After digging through this TOS agreement (which you agree to when you sign up), there it was… a limitation of 400MB per email account.

How fair is your Fair Use Policy?

These days most Terms and Conditions can change “from time to time” and they often do. It made us ask these questions:

  • “Can you rely on unlimited if it is defined by a Fair Use Policy that can change from “time to time”?
  • Is this policy designed to capture customers while giving the company the option to change the game when and as they choose?
  • Do you want to use a service that could be diminished by heavy users?
  • If you promote an “Unlimited” service, but specify limits in your Fair Use Policy, can you really call it unlimited?
  • If you promote a Fair Use Policy that does not specify usage, do you really have a Fair Use Policy?

I hope this article has helped you understand a little more about Fair Use Policies. If you are like me, you may prefer to get good calling rates and pay only for what you use, which may be less than unlimited.

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News Small Business VoIP FAQ's

What is the best VoIP modem router

Neerav Bhatt is one of Australia’s most successful bloggers and he has been involved with computers for many years, including the new area of social media. Neerav write a regular blog on technology and other interesting and varied topics and we came across this blog about the best modem/router to use for VoIP: http://bit.ly/a85zKS

You may hear some people say that the quality of VoIP is poor. It is good to realise that the important issues really surround the quality of your broadband internet plan, quality of your modem and the Quality of Service (QoS) settings on your modem and network.

Click Here to sign up for a 30 day trial account with two telephone lines and see just how well it can work.

Categories
News Small Business VoIP FAQ's

Your old Telstra number

old telstra numbers ported to virion
porting of telstra numbers
Using your Telstra number is easy. We simply setup a call diversion immediate on your Telstra phone number to your main virion indial number. This means that everyone who calls your normal number will be answered on your new Voice over IP phones. There is a cost for the diversion for each incoming call, but this only temporary before we transfer your Telstra number to virion and you start paying half price for it.
Transferring a number to virion is called “Porting” and its a process that can take 3-4 weeks to complete, but once its complete you will no longer be paying high monthly rates through Telstra for your phone service.