4 Ways to Make your Business Phone System More Reliable

Voice Over IP has empowered small businesses with the capability to achieve more uptime than ever before. With these simple tips you can significantly reduce or eliminate down time from your business communications.

1. Utilize a Cloud Based Phone System and be sure that your Primary Voice Connection Provider is the same company as the the Hosted PBX Provider.

   Movie your phone system from a closet on your premise to 24x7 manned high reliability data centers (ie: the cloud). Even in the unlikely event that your business had a fire or flood and was totally devastated, incoming callers would hear your message greeting, could dial options, reach voicemails, and be forwarded to cell phones or alternate locations, presenting the appearance of a normal operating business to your customers. Additionally, by having a direct connection to your cloud communications provider, you ensure that your data will be delivered every time, on time, via QOS. This is not guaranteed if your internet service provider is a different company than your hosted voip provider.

2. Maintain a Low Cost Backup Internet Connection for Redundancy

   The most common point of failure in a communications network is in the last mile. This means your T1 or Fiber connection. With a backup fiber or cable connection, when your primary T1 or Fiber connection goes down, your phone system can continue operating without missing a beat. All features of the phone system will continue to function. We would not recommend that you run your mission critical business over a cable connection, however as a backup it can be a very smart and economical addition to your network plan. Consider that your primary connection will be up 99% of the time. The cable connection traditionally has quality issues, such that you wouldn’t want to use it all the time. However in the rare occurence when your primary connection is down, there is a good chance that the cable connection will provide sufficient call quality for the duration of the outage.

3. Use Power-Over-Ethernet Switches and keep them on a UPS

   You can survive hours without power by simply having backup batteries or UPS’s on site at your business. Power-Over-Ethernet is a network technology which allows the VoIP Phones to be powered by the Ethernet Switch. What this means is that you can strategically place UPS’s at your business to power the switches, and keep your phone system up even when the rest of your business is without power.

4. Purchase a Backup Generator

   Power outages are unfortunately becoming more common as the weather becomes more extreme. Many parts of New Jersey were without power for over a week following Hurricane Sandy. When you are in this circumstance, a backup battery is insufficient. You will need either a Gasoline or a Natural Gas Generator. For more information about surviving natural disasters see our knowledge base article on that topic here.