Global Hosted VoIP Providers

Your company has international offices and you are looking for a new, global phone system solution. Since hosted VoIP is the direction the PBX market seems to be headed, it looks like a cloud solution will be on the list of items that you and the IT team will be researching.

In this short video, AeroCom President, Mike Smith, talks about one thing you need to be aware of, right away: Local Voice Gateways. What’s the difference between a Data Center and a Local Voice Gateway? What affect will it have on your company’s call quality? Why is this more critical for global companies’ phone systems, as opposed to companies with only domestic sites?

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About the Host
Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards and in 2011, he was honored as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. Follow Mike on LinkedIn, Twitter or SpiceWorks.

Transcript:

Your company is global, and you have locations all throughout the world, and you’re looking at hosted VoIP solutions or hosted PBX.

One of the things you really want to take into consideration with the hosted VoIP providers you’re researching is where they have points of presence (POPs). You want to be very careful with how you ask this question, because (as someone who quotes hosted VoIP providers on a daily basis), I know that depending on how you add ask this question, you’re going to get different answers. You want to really ask them where are your Local Voice Gateways, and you want to be very specific with explaining it.

You want to know if… … say you have a location in Australia… if someone in Australia picks up the phone to make a local phone call to another business in Australia, is that phone going to come all the way back out of Australia (to maybe the United States), to pull dial tone? And that’s an international call to Australia…  Or, does the hosted VoIP provider have, what we call a “Local Voice Gateway” there in Australia, so that dial tone is going to be provided from Australia.

If you have global locations, you really want to make sure you ask, “Do you have a local voice gateway in the countries that our company has locations, or at least nearby?”

What that will do, it not only saves you on international calls, but also more importantly, even if the provider says, “Hey, we’ll waive all international calling…” That’s great, but voice quality is obviously going to be affected if your phone calls, your local phone calls in this example in Australia, are pulling dial tone all the way from the United States versus right there in Australia or any other country where you’re located.

That’s just one thing you want to make sure you’re very clear on. If you’re shopping hosted VoIP providers and you’re a global company, ask about the service providers’ Local Gateways.

Don’t just ask about data centers, because that’s different than a Local Gateway. They may have a data center in that country, but they may not have a Local Voice Gateway. And make sure you explain the scenario like I just did to you.

I hope that’s helpful. I hope that gets you to the right vendors quickly.

And by the way, you don’t have to know all this stuff. Just give us a call. We’ll be happy to help you find the best service providers for your company’s exact needs. Just give us a call or email us. We’d be happy to help. [email protected] 877-465-3505

Have a great day!