VoIP 'saved' flooded businesses

Flooding caused untold misery for homeowners and businesses across England earlier this year, but one firm found it could continue working through the freak weather thanks to VoIP.

Cheltenham-based telecoms company TTL found that it had to make use of the IP telephony products it provided to local firms to keep their own business afloat instead.

TTL director, Stuart Davis, told Comms Business that maintaining their customers' communication systems was their daily task, but in flood conditions in became necessary to do the same themselves.

"Once the mains water ceased, we ran our office on a skeleton staff, with the majority of staff working remotely, via VPN (virtual private network) access and through the use of mobile devices [and] handsets," he said.

"This meant that if we did lose power, whilst we would have been unable to use the handsets themselves, the [handset's] software system and failover option meant calls would be diverted to mobiles, ensuring our customers could still reach us and we could remain in touch with them."

Mr Davis added that seeing the benefits of VoIP in action was one "silver lining" to the crisis situation and means that the firm's staff now have ample firsthand experience of how vital keeping up communications can be which they can pass on to customers.