Experts offer VoIP setup tips

Businesses looking to tap into the cost saving and efficiency-boosting benefits of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) systems have been offered tips on how to integrate it successfully.

Jocelyn Philbrook, the vice president of corporate marketing at Canadian-based Sonus Networks highlighted the speed at which IP telephony services have spread in the business world.

She told the IT Business Canada website: "What we've seen in the past five years is the quality assurance and high speed bandwidth that are able to support multiple types of communications-video, voice, data-very rapidly and with a high degree of quality throughout the network."

These faster networks have encouraged the development of VoIP as larger bandwidth connections allow for greater reliability of services and higher quality voice and video links.

However, Roberta Fox of Mount Alberta-based Fox Group Consulting pointed out that established companies have been slower to adopt IP telephony services.

"VoIP has become the de facto standard on net new locations, but we're not seeing people rip out legacy TDM systems and replace them with IP telephony," she said.

However, these firms could make the transition easier by bringing in the systems incrementally, Ms Fox advised.

"Within a single office you could have some IP phones that plug into the LAN and others that plug into the traditional TDM system - you don't have to be 100 per cent VoIP to take advantage of some of the capabilities," she said.