Do you need IP Telephones?

Do you need IP Telephones? There has been so much hype around IP-Telephony and Voice over IP (VoIP) that I think sometimes people believe it has fully replaced every other kind of telecommunications systems available today. This is completely untrue. Although the vast majority of systems being sold today are at least "IP-Enabled" only a very small percentage are being installed with all IP-Phones, or even a mostly IP-Phones.

Of course the people spreading the hype are naturally the companies that manufacture and/or install IP-only telephone systems. They don′t have anything else to offer, so they want you to believe that they have the system that makes the most sense: The pure IP system. The fact of the matter is that IP, whether for IP-Telephony or VoIP, is simply another form of transport and does not inherently offer any additional features or applications in and of itself. It′s just another way of getting "there". And although we tend to refer to the internet as the "Information Superhighway", when it comes to transporting voice, we should really think of IP as "off-road" because much the same way a car requires special equipment such as 4-wheel-drive, special tires, greater clearance, etc, in order be driven on dirt roads or sand beaches, your voice communications system needs special equipment in order to travel over the internet or private circuits using Internet Protocol.

Routers and switches with QoS, and Cat5 cable to name a few. So what good does IP-Telephony or VoIP do for us? Plenty if it is deployed properly and with the intention of yielding some tangible benefits which need to be identified and evaluated BEFORE deciding on how much of your phone system, if any, should be IP. What kind of benefits? Let′s take a closer look at what you can and cannot do with an IP-Phone, versus a non-IP or ′traditional" digital phone.

Assuming a typical "plain vanilla" type organization, the needs of the telephone set begin with being able make and take calls, dial numbers, put a call on hold, transfer, conference, some flexible ringing perhaps. So far, no big deal. The ironic thing is that those manufacturers with only IP-Phones have gotten into the telephone business late, and they do not have the rich feature set that traditional telephone companies have been offering for many, many years. I′m talking about simple features like "Call-forwarding", and multiple call-forwarding, speed-dials etc.

But in reality, most organizations only use a small percentage of the features available in most telephone systems. The manufacturers create such feature-rich platforms in order to appeal to the widest customer audience. OK, so what are the real “killer apps” that take advantage of the fact that an IP-Phone is utilizing the same network infrastructure as your PC and servers? Unified Messaging? Outlook Integration? Click-to-Call? Believe it or not, none of the applications named above require an IP-Phone. Let me repeat that: You do not have to have an IP-Phone to be able to utilize Telephone-to-PC applications via your desktop or laptop PC, nor applications that reside on the server, including Unified Messaging and Outlook Integration.

Surprised? Most non-technical people are. It’s the hype. Then why are organizations deploying IP-Phones at all? The reasons are tactical: Overcoming geographic and logistical limitations of traditional circuits to achieve seamless integration of remote users. Or, to put it more simply: Anywhere you have internet access, you can have an integrated office phone. That’s right. And it will work just like the one sitting on the desk at your place of business. A remote office, work from home situations, a vacation home (aghhh!), multiple offices etc. are all good reasons for deploying IP-Phones.

How about VoIP? Does it allow me to make “free” calls on the internet? That question is a lot more complex than most people want to believe. First of all, you must understand that the business world still ultimately communicates over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Even organizations that are running pure-IP phone systems with all IP-Phones still have to connect to the rest of the world or all they have is a very expensive intercom. Copper trunks and/or some type of T1 will connect to a pure-IP phone system via some kind of gateway. What about VoIP T1’s you ask? Lol Well that’s a topic for another blog I think. But if you’d like to contact me, please feel free to do so by filling out the form and I’ll be happy to speak with you. I might even use an IP-Phone from my vacation home. And you’ll think I’m in my office. Unless you hear a seagull in the background.

Steve Melillo, President INS Technologies