What is Hosted Voice? The modernisation of business telecoms

Business communications, as well as daily operations, have become increasingly cloud-based since the Covid-19 pandemic. This was to ensure that staff could work remotely both throughout the pandemic and going forward in the uncertain times ahead. Hybrid working has fast become the new normal and is going nowhere thanks to technology such as Enreach contact that allows businesses to work the same way at home as they would in the office.

What is hosted voice?

Hosted voice is one of the latest buzzwords in the telecoms industry, but what does that actually mean? Hosted voice refers to a phone system that is fully hosted and managed within the cloud. There are many names for this as the process itself falls under a large umbrella of operations so, you may have also heard of:

• Hosted VoIP
• Hosted PBX
• Hosted Telephony
• Cloud PBX
• Cloud Phone System
• Cloud Telephony

Hosted voice gives you the freedom to access your business phone anywhere and everywhere, all you need is a reliable, good quality internet connection. This solution is ideal, as it means you can work anywhere, anytime, from any device. It has become an integral part of many flexible work environments, meaning work is no longer limited to the office. This can support hybrid working or remote structures for your employees.

How does hosted voice work?

Instead of the traditional method of routing underground copper cables to your office, Cloud phone systems transmits call data over the internet this is also known as VoIP, (Voice over Internet Protocol). This means the only thing you will need to access your business phone system to make and receive calls is a good quality internet connection.

The way this works is that when you pick up the phone to make a call, VoIP essentially turns your voice into data. In the telecoms industry, we refer to this as a data packet. Once your voice has been turned into a data packet. VoIP will then send that data through to a data centre by uploading your voice. The person on the other side of the line then receives that data which is your voice and then for them to hear what you said it is downloaded through the internet connection.  This is an instant process.

Benefits of Hosted voice for business communications

• With hosted voice your phone system can travel wherever your employees are and they can still access any extension needed. This then provides seamless communication even in the event of business disruption such as an office closure.
• Unlike traditional phone systems where you would have to call in an engineer to scale up or down, or even start from scratch… hosted voice can be scaled depending on your business needs at the speed of light. Cloud solutions are able to turn computers into a softphone. This means you can cut costs if needed, by not even having to pay for all of the hand-held phones to make and receive calls.
• Unlike traditional phone systems, changes like setting up diverts or renaming users is super simple. Instead of requiring an engineer call out, you can make the change yourself.
• Modern cloud phone systems such as the HD Touch Handsets can do more, why get just a phone when you could have a system where you can: have the option to hold multiple lines, have an auto-attendant to divert calls to the correct place, download voicemails, record calls, integrate a CRM System, integrate mobiles, instant messaging, gather data and so much more.
• The system is made up of a phone, computer, internet connection and a PBX box either hosted in the office or on the cloud. Cloud-hosted PBX boxes help businesses become more dynamic with their work allowing for employees to work from home whilst retaining an office phone number and all the system features. This takes up a lot less space than the traditional phone system.

Traditional telephony is being changed as we know it!

From 2025, traditional PSTN and ISDN systems will be switched off by BT and you will no longer be able to buy the copper-based systems which means you will have no choice but to change to modern phone systems.  By switching to a hosted telephony system, you are not only futureproofing your business phone system, but you are also ticking an extra task off the list so that you don’t need to worry about it later.

When you choose a business phone system from Enreach, you have everything you need to work wonders. You can read more about our cloud phone systems to learn more.

If you are interested in modernising your business telephony and making your communications more intuitive our team are on hand to help you in a flash, simply give us a call on 0333 3603 723 or email us at enquires.uk@enreach.com.