Home Office Phone System
Hosted VoIP Solution
Need a home office phone system?
A good quality VoIP home office phone system is made up of five parts.
- Reliable Hosted business VoIP Provider
- High quality broadband service
- High quality IP phone
- Feature Rich services
- At a price you can afford
1. Reliable Hosted business VoIP Provider -
Hosted Voice Solutions specialize in providing state of the art hosted VoIP phone systems to small and medium sizes business. But the service also works in a home office too! Actually I use it in my home office. I have a two phone system but the service also works with just one phone or many.
The service that I am referring to is
iTELConnect.
Hosted Voice Solutions is a preferred partner to iTELConnect and have been offering their services to businesses for the past several years. For businesses they offer a basic VoIP service and another service called
Communication Manager
which offers an array of features.
With my home office phone system I have one Communication Manager account and one basic phone service account.
2. High quality broadband service -
As I noted above the iTEL service is a VoIP service and can run over your internet connection or over iTEL's national network. The key to having a high quality VoIP home office phone system is a good quality broadband service. To check out the quality of your current broadband service try the
MySpeed VoIP tool click here.
The MySpeed VoIP test seems to be the most accurate tool that I have found. If your current connection is not good enough for VoIP then either upgrade your broadband service or go with a landline base phone system. There is really no way to achieve a good quality VoIP service without having a quality broadband connection.
The MySpeed VoIP tool calculates a measurement called MOS, or Mean Opinion Score. The MOS is a numeric measure of the sound quality at the receiving end of a communication circuit. My MOS score averaged around 3.8 on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the best quality. Usually I have a good quality phone connection. Any MOS score below 3.5 is poor and above 4.2 is really good.
MySpeed VoIP tool calculates a Quality of Service (QOS) index which is also a great gauge for determining the quality of your broadband service for VoIP. See the
MySpeed VoIP website
for more information about the MySpeed VoIP tool.
For more broadband and VoIP quality test tools see
broadband & VoIP speed test tools.
3. High quality IP phone -
iTELConnect uses Polycom IP phones with their service. You purchase the IP phone through iTEL because they have to program it to work with their system.
I use the new Polycom 550 phone (shown here) for my personal business phone and love it. I also have the Polycom 330 in my home office. You can also use the 501 Polycom which is one of their standard phones that work just as good. I just liked the look of the 550. iTEL also offers the Polycom 430 IP phone.
Click here - To discover more about the Polycom phones used by iTEL.
4. Feature Rich services -
My home office phone system is equal to or probably better than most corporate phone systems....it really is amazing what a hosted solution can provide you! The CM service comes with an automated attendant if you choose to use it. I do not use an auto attendant and just have my calls come directly to my phone. It makes for a faster connection for the caller but it is really a personal preference about how you want your home office phone system to sound to callers and function. A well configured auto attendant can give a very professional appearance.
Another feature is the ability to put a caller on hold and they hear music on hold (hosted by iTEL).
This is professional too.
You do not have to purchase a system that plays music. That is part of the hosted solution.
Other features are conference calling, call recording, a very nice Polycom speaker phone, transfer call, inbound and outbound faxing, faxes sent to your inbox, a Outlook email account, call log, call forwarding, voicemail retrieval from you phone or PC, the ability to use the feature anywhere with any phone as long as you have an internet connection, plus many more features.
5. Pricing -
You can use this spreadsheet below to get a general idea of how much your phones and service will cost. Make sure you enter the contract period. iTEl requires a 12, 24 or 36 month contract. You can also go up to 60 months but I only showed three years in the spreadsheet. Also select the Polycom model phone and the number of phone/s you need. If you need unlimited long distance select this feature and quantity also. Unlimited LD (within the USA) is $20 per month per service plan. I would recommend the unlimited LD. It's great not having to worry about long distance charges. Lastly select the service plan, Basic or Communication Manager (CM) and the quantity of each. The price will drop for both the 24 and 36 month plan. Set-up is free if you go for the 36 month plan (most business opt for the 36 month plan). My plan is from year to year.
Please note that this spreadsheet does not include the cost of your internet connection and it is only an estimate. You can
contact us
for our network pricing, formal quote or for any other matter. By the way, iTEL will only guarantee Quality of Service if you are using their private network. That is how they maintain control. This is not to say that you will not have a good VoIP quality with your current broadband service. Check out the broadband test tools noted above to help you determine the quality of your network. Next step! Call me to schedule a demo of the iTEL Communications Manager. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes and is really worth your time if you are seriously looking into purchasing a high quality home office phone system. Or you can just call me to discuss. Thank you!
President
Hosted Voice Solutions
Click here - To discover more options for a home office phone system.
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