Cloud PBX
What is a VoIP phone?
A VoIP phone is a hardware- or software-based telephone designed to use voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to send and receive phone calls over an IP network. The phone converts analog telephony audio into a digital format that can be transmitted over the internet and converts incoming digital phone signals from the internet to standard telephone audio.
VoIP phones, also known as IP phones, include features and capabilities not found in traditional analog phones. They also have additional performance requirements because phone calls are placed over the internet instead of the legacy public switched telephone network (PSTN).
What is a VoIP phone?
VoIP phones offer organizations the following advantages:
- Cost savings. Organizations can reduce calling costs by switching to VoIP services. While traditional analog phones can have lower upfront costs, they are more costly to support, upgrade and integrate with communications applications. IP phones also offer less expensive long-distance and international calls, as VoIP phone calls are charged at the local rate of the call’s destination.
- Performance. VoIP phones offer greater mobility and scalability than traditional handsets. If an organization moves to a new location, it does not need to acquire new phone lines, which it would with a traditional phone system. Adding new phones to a VoIP system is only limited by the available bandwidth on the organization’s network. Softphones also provide increased mobility, as clients are not tied to physical locations like they would be with hard-wired phones.
- Integration. VoIP phones can also integrate with other business applications. For example, organizations can integrate their CRM software with VoIP phones to view call records and analytics for different customers and sales leads or to make phone calls straight from CRM applications.
