How To Set Up Internet On Phone

More and more businesses are because making the switch to VoIP.

Cheaper monthly bills and more advanced features are appealing, but some businesses still hesitate to follow through.

They call back the hardware costs are too expensive, or that getting everything prepare up is going to exist a time-consuming and challenging procedure.

But if you prepare and cull the right provider, your transition to a deject phone system can be seamless.

We'll bear witness you exactly how to gear up VoIP for your business, lower upfront costs, and get the most out of your new VoIP phone system.

Acquire how to set a VoIP phone system, step-by-step.

Test Your Network and Internet Connection
Invest In The Right VoIP Hardware
Detect a VoIP Provider with the Right Features
How to Get a Business organisation Phone Number
Ready Upward Your VoIP Phone System
Test Your New VoIP Lines
Train Your Staff to Become The About Out of VoIP Features

How Is a VoIP Phone System Different?

Before nosotros jump into the details, we need to establish what sets Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone autonomously from an analog phone.

An analog telephone connects straight with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) through defended landlines. Phone calls are facilitated by the local telephone company, finer crave a directly connection to a telephone jack.

IP phones connect to the telephone network via a VoIP provider through the net. It turns the audio into data packets and transmits them using the Net Protocol (IP). The provider's data center then transforms the signals into analog and transfers them through to the PSTN.

Since SIP phones don't need dedicated landlines, it's easier to scale an office with VoIP. With a traditional phone system, to share telephone service with multiple employees, an on-premises Private Branch Exchange (PBX) is required.

Typical VoIP network setup for a small business.

Now that you lot know what VoIP is, let's discuss how you lot can begin setting upward your VoIP telephone system. If you lot learn improve through.

i) Examination Your Network and Net Connection

You might be concerned nigh how much bandwidth VoIP uses, simply a dominion of thumb is well-nigh 100 kbps upload and download per line.

Most internet service providers now offering gigabit speeds with their business plans. So your current connection is more probable fast enough for a VoIP phone system. One caveat is that some habitation connections have much slower upload speeds, such every bit some DSL connections.

In addition to speed, the problems that bear on VoIP call quality are ofttimes related to the instability of a connexion. Jitter and packet loss are two metrics to examine. A wired net connection, like fiber or cablevision, is preferred. Microwave and other options are likewise unstable.

And your network hardware can also get a clogging. If the router or network tin't handle peak traffic, you could feel choppy audio or other bug like dropped calls. Wi-Fi works fine in near cases, simply a wired connection is ever meliorate.

Take aVoIP speed test to stress test your network and identify potential issues. The results will give you a proficient idea of whether or not your connection can handle a VoIP installation.

Yous might too explore configuring Quality of Service (QoS) to prioritize VoIP packets and information. That way, voice traffic is placed above traffic similar YouTube or Netflix, ensuring less latency and packet loss.

2) Invest In The Right VoIP Hardware

If you already take a VoIP provider, the next step of your VoIP setup is to invest in VoIP hardware. Since VoIP has become standard for businesses over the last few years, at that place are a lot of cutting-edge options. Scout the video beneath for a quick breakdown of the types of equipment you'll need to get your VoIP organisation up and running.

If you desire your phone calls to sound bully, yous should invest in a loftier-end VoIP desk-bound phone similar the Polycom VVX601. In that location are too less expensive options for both desk phones available if all yous demand is to make and receive phone calls.

VoIP headsets are great to complement your business concern telephone so you can walk around while on calls. Agents will have their hands bachelor to wait upward customer information, chat with their team, or add notes to a CRM.

Plug the headset into the back of the VoIP phone.

Want To Keep Your Onetime Desk Phones? Utilise a VoIP Adapter

If you desire to use your existing office phone equipment, y'all can nonetheless use it with VoIP. With an Analog Phone Adapter (ATA), you can make the switch to VoIP and go along all of your analog phones. The VoIP adapter functions betwixt the phones and your network, digitizing the analog signals.

Since you don't change whatsoever equipment, all staff members already know how to work the phones. Y'all won't demand to train your staff.

Minimize Hardware Costs with Softphones

Some other way to lower your costs is to consider using a business organisation phone app instead of a desk phone. These apps are too known equally softphones. You can download the softphone to your computer or smartphone.

Because VoIP uses the internet, y'all don't need dedicated hardware. That way, you can skip some of the steps of an office phone installation.

A softphone is a slice of software or a mobile app that lets y'all receive and make phone calls. It works like a regular phone to handle phone calls. With a VoIP service, you lot can dial numbers on whatever phone or mobile network.

With the Nextiva App for desktop, all you need to handle calls efficiently is a quality USB or Bluetooth headset. If you're on your laptop, you lot already have a microphone and speakers set up for instant phone calls. The Nextiva App is likewise available for any Android or iOS device and then your squad tin handle concern calls on their cell phones.

3) Find a VoIP Provider with the Correct Features

Switching to VoIP doesn't but mean you can supplant your landline. It'due south also an opportunity to move your business organization communications into the 21st century, at no extra price.

In tardily 2022, we surveyed over 1,000 professionals about business advice and used the insights to create the 2020 Land of Business Advice Report. I of the key insights was that more than than one in three companies had lost customers due to internal communication errors.

The correct VoIP provider volition assistance yous overcome such bug. Your company will get the features you lot need to eliminate silos and create efficient, cross-department communications.

You could get a CRM, telephone call analytics, and unified communications, not just phone service. Then earlier you make your choice, make sure the provider has the right features your business organization needs.

Listed below are some of the VoIP features you get with Nextiva:

Advanced Call Routing: Route incoming calls to available agents in your business organization with flexible policies.
Auto Attendant: Welcome inbound calls with a recorded message and options to assistance guide them to the correct department.
Phone call Analytics: Access detailed reports that show individual amanuensis and call center performance.
Telephone call Popular: Display relevant information about callers automatically when answering incoming calls.
Built-In CRM: Back up your customers and equip your sales teams with i view of the customer.
IVR: Interactive Voice Response uses spoken communication recognition to help customers accomplish the correct department and solve simple issues.
Voicemail to Text: Meliorate the efficiency of responding to voicemail by receiving them via SMS.
Low-cost International Calls: Nextiva's international calling rates first every bit low every bit $0.01 per minute.

For enterprises, we also offer unified communications and more than advanced features like telephone call encryption. In particular, Nextiva's network has numerous redundant data centers that requite your organisation the high reliability and operation it needs to scale.

4) How To Go a Concern Phone Number

Depending on your VoIP provider, a local phone number could be included with any VoIP plan that you cull. This is the case with Nextiva.

You have a few ways to go a phone number for your concern. If y'all take i already, you would port it over. Otherwise, you lot can select a local number that's available or choose a cost-free number.

Unlike Types of Phone Numbers:

Local Phone Numbers: A local surface area phone number is perfect for modest businesses and companies that accept a limited market area. Local numbers are usually free simply tin can cost up to $10/month.
Toll-Gratuitous Phone Numbers: A toll-free number is an 800 number untied to location, and tin can seem more than professional person and trustworthy to your customers. Your customers won't have to pay when calling your support lines. A toll-free number typically costs effectually $10/calendar month.
Vanity Numbers: Vanity numbers are typically memorable cost-free numbers that spell out specific words, for example, 1-800-FLOWERS. These numbers usually cost somewhere between $10-50/month. To secure a recognizable number, you may also need to purchase the number from a tertiary-party vendor.

Nextiva provides local business organization phone numbers for all U.Southward. states and also offers cost-gratuitous and virtual phone numbers.

Related: How Do I Get a Business Phone Number?

If you don't desire a new number, Nextiva provides free porting and then you tin continue your existing telephone numbers without any extra cost.

Keep Your Existing Business Number with Porting

Number porting is how you transfer phone numbers from your existing service provider to your new i. We handle the number porting for gratis for all Nextiva customers.

To transfer any number to Nextiva, follow the three simple steps below.

Option your business concern telephone plan. Cull the plan that fits your concern with powerful features.
Asking temporary numbers. Let us know that you demand temporary numbers, and nosotros volition have them ready on day 1. You can set upwards call forwarding with your quondam provider, and begin using Nextiva right away.
Complete a Alphabetic character Of Agency (LOA). Provide all the necessary details so our staff can handle the porting process with your old provider.

After you complete this process, our team handles the porting in 10-20 business days. We'll keep you enlightened of its status so switching to VoIP is easy and seamless.

5) Set Up Your VoIP Telephone System

Once you have a provider and hardware, it's fourth dimension to complete the setup in your office. The specific steps depend on hardware and the number of employees.

We simply sell phones and handsets that are fix to plug-and-play. So below, we outline the simple process of getting your VoIP upwardly and running with united states. If you use other providers or purchase phones from a third-political party, the procedure may require additional steps.

How to Fix Upward VoIP Desk Phones and Handsets

The necessary steps depend on the model that you've bought and your network setup. With a standard network switch in identify, the setup process is simple. If you have Power over Ethernet (PoE), the electrical signal is carried in one wire — saving yous from needing an Air conditioning adapter.

VoIP desk-bound phones or handsets without PoE:

Plug the Ac adapter into the outlet, then plug it into the phone or handset base of operations.
Connect the IP telephone to the switch or router using a CAT5e or CAT6 cable.
Wait for the phone to initialize, then check for punch tone.

If you have a router that supports Power over Ethernet (PoE), the procedure is slightly unlike but is even quicker.

VoIP desk phones to PoE-enabled routers:

Connect the phones with the PoE-enabled switch or router with Ethernet cables. Stay within the recommended max length for twisted pair cables of 328 feet.
Once continued, the telephone should turn on. It should automatically establish a connection to your VoIP provider.

How to Set VoIP Headsets

Not all headsets offer the one-touch reply characteristic. To use information technology, you need a mod headset with one-touch enabled and connect it with Electronic Hook Switch (EHS) cables.

Diagram of how an Electronic Hook Switch installation works with a VoIP phone.

Wireless VoIP headsets and phones with EHS cable support:

Plug the Air conditioning adapter into the closest outlet, and the base unit of the headset.
Attach the EHS cable into the headset'southward base unit of measurement.
Plug the other cease into the desk-bound phone into the headset network port, and EHS port. For more than detailed instructions, follow the EHS instruction manual.
Put on the headset, and press the call command push button to check the connexion.

For wired headsets that utilise a regular phone jack, the process is even more straightforward.

Headsets and desk phones with headphone jacks/ports:

Plug the headphone cable jack into the marked headset port with a direct connect cablevision. Many models mark the headset port with a small icon on the left.
Put on the headset, and printing the phone call control button to bank check for punch tone.
Make a exam call to confirm the volume and call quality. If the headset volume is low, you lot may demand an amplifier.

half-dozen) Exam Your New VoIP Lines

If yous did everything right, and you have a fast connexion, yous won't take whatever issues. It'due south improve to be rubber than sorry.

Things you should pay attention to when making the calls:

Audio Quality: Are calls clear and consequent? Is in that location whatever static or other sign of depression-quality sound?
Latency: Are in that location significant delays between when you say something and the receiver hears it?
Connection Stability: Did any of the calls temporarily drib? Some firewall settings tin can cause calls to drib entirely after 11 minutes, so it'south worth testing for at least 15-30 minutes.

You should besides try to test your lines when at that place is a lot of other network action. Network congestion can pb to a multifariousness of line bug, from dropped calls to choppy audio and more.

Pro Tip: A wired, directly connection is ever preferable to using Wi-Fi. For minimal latency and other VoIP issues, go for Ethernet rather than Wi-Fi connection.

Yous could too call a diagnostic service number to confirm your caller ID by calling (800) 444-4444.

Related: 10 Common VoIP Problems (+Piece of cake Fixes)

7) Train Your Staff to Get The Near Out of VoIP Features

For many small businesses, a switch to VoIP represents the first time they take meaningful business organization telephone features.

These calling features aren't typically included with traditional phone plans. With Nextiva, you can integrate the phones directly with a CRM, create custom routing policies, frontwards voicemails to email, call forwarding, record calls in the cloud, and much more.

To ensure your staff makes employ of these features, yous should ready aside time to railroad train your squad.

Yous might call up it's non necessary. But it is. 63% of managers responded that the adoption of new technologies at their office was too deadening. Employees want to use business communication equipment and then they can focus on serving customers and closing sales.

With Nextiva, you don't take to make your own grooming materials or presentations. You can apply our extensive library of grooming videos, user manuals, and online guides. They go far easy to sympathise the new CRM interface and all its features.

Likewise, tin also contact our customer support team if you want some ane-on-one guidance and aid on any issues.

Effortless VoIP Setup With Nextiva

One of the reasons our customers love us is because it is and then like shooting fish in a barrel to get started with Nextiva. We have tested everything and hand-picked a catalog of high-quality phones and hardware. We provision all of our phones so all yous need to do is plug them in.

You don't need to access phones by their IP address or mess with firmware to assign them to your VoIP account. Instead, you just demand to assign the phones to your staff from a user-friendly online interface.

Our basic small business VoIP plan starts at just $twenty/user per month. Information technology has all the features a growing business needs to operate. All our plans include unlimited calling in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. It's the perfect phone system for remote teams. Information technology works in the role and at dwelling.

Nosotros've won many awards for our Amazing Service. We'll help yous every step of the way. They will help you with the installation, resolve any issues, and highlight the most useful features for your company.

Julie Bai is a product manager at Nextiva, UCaaS evangelist, no-balderdash communicator and translator for people, canis familiaris lover, and mother to an adorably agile boy.