Adopting a Hosted Phone Solution can be one of the easiest ways to cut costs and elevate your business communication and telephony infrastructure.

With all the heavy lifting handled in the cloud, by the service provider, a Hosted Phone System will provide you with a cornucopia of robust features, unmatched flexibility and high-quality voice calls. However, like any technology, adopting a Hosted Phone System is not without its own challenges.

When implementing a Hosted Phone System, you may experience some challenges. With an understanding of the issues should with the roll out of your system.  Let’s look at a few of the issues.

The Problem

The first step to maintain a high level of quality with your Hosted Phone Solution is to ensure your business is equipped with an adequate internet connection. Many times, the Hosted Phone Solutions gets blamed for poor internet connectivity.  When most Hosted Phone Systems are in high speed data centers and operate with little or no latency.  Since the Hosted Phone System relies on a good internet signal, it is important to evaluate your internet provider as well.   Can they supply a reliable fast internet connection?  Can they give you good bandwidth options or even deliver service on fiber?  A little research with your provider will go a long way in making that easy transition to Hosted Phone Solutions.

Thankfully, VoIP has become far more reliable in recent years, but unreliability can still be a key issue for your company. When adopting a Hosted Phone Solution, the first place to start is to test your internet connection and recognize bottlenecks it may have. A system is only as robust as its weakest point. Of course, when it comes to your internet connection, wired is always better than wireless. We are not advocates to putting your business class service over Wi-Fi.  Wires allow for a constant flow of data and cannot be interrupted by external factors.  Fiber is even better than wires.  Fiber optics is being installed by many internet service providers now.  Bandwidth options and level of service tend to be better with fiber, but it is not necessary for an optimal solution.  With many Hosted Phone Solutions companies are going to test your internet speed and reliability before moving to completion and set up of your system. With all the measures in place before turning up, 99% of people are now experiencing a better Hosted Phone Solution today than just 5 years ago.  

Existing Equipment

The Problem

One of the largest culprits in interrupting or restricting your Hosted Phone System service is the router, or even any other incompatible hardware. Many old routers simply cannot support VoIP and the transfer of data that occurs. Other network hardware, such as switches above can run into compatibility issues.

The Solution

Most Hosted Phone Systems offer a POE switch for rent or purchase.  Usually best just to get it and utilize it. The Hosted Phone System providers run extensive tests on their equipment and POE” s.  If you don’t get a POE, then each desk will have to have power to it for the cord that plugs into the phone.

The Problem

Hosted Phone Systems can seem daunting at first to those unfamiliar with what seems like a complex system. With its own unique terminology, abbreviations, and requirements, the unfamiliar nature of the system can prove challenging to even the most seasoned IT or data center manager. Running a data center or configuring the network for your office is a different task to implementing a Hosted Phone System solution. With a lack of knowledge and even groundwork understanding, it can seem near impossible to transition to a Hosted Phone System solution, or at least improbable to take the time to gather the knowledge necessary to jump in. And even once you establish a Hosted Phone System solution for your office, who sets it up and knows how to maintain the system?

The Solution

Thankfully, most of the heavy lifting and setup for a Hosted Phone System is handled by the provider, through the cloud. As the service is hosted on the provider’s back end and data centers, and not necessarily an extra infrastructure required to be established on premise, setup can be as simple as installing a new router. Because of the nature of hosted solutions, you can have your new phone system up and running within minutes.

If you take the previous steps to ensure a strong enough internet connection and compatible hardware, setup should be as simple as calling a provider, plugging in all your hardware, and you’ll be all set to make calls. Of course, getting everything setup is half the battle, and configuring your phone system is more than just plugging a phone into a router. With the massive feature lists provided with a Hosted Phone Solution, you may need to take some time to configure everything the way you want – but again gone are the days of flipping through user manuals to understand complicated web portals. Generally included with the service, many Hosted Phone System providers will include personal training and hours of training any admin users you would like.  If you purchase the service through a representative or partner of a Hosted Phone System. They usually will provide on site training and hand holding the day of the conversion.