Make substantial savings on costs of telephone calls
BroadbandFixit will setup services for you and provide common sense advice on how to use this technology and to link it up with existing telephone systems. We recommend and use Voiptalk for voice over IP services. Their web site is at www.voiptalk.co.uk
Here are some of the savings that you can make:
- Calls to anywhere in Europe the United States, Canada, China etc at 1p per minute
- UK rates 0.9p per minute peak, 0.5p per minute off-peak 6pm to 8am, 0.2p Weekend rate. These rates apply to UK geographic numbers such as to Edinburgh 0131.
- Rent a phone number and line from anywhere in the UK from £1.99 per month.
- European numbers from 4.99 per month. This would suit an estate agent who sells properties in Spain and needs clients who are visiting properties in Spain to call him at a local rate, even though he is in the UK
- If you want unlimited calls you can buy a package for £9.99 per month including rental AND includes calls to international destinations.
This is how we save money on our telephone lines.
There is one physical BT line that comes into the premises. Its telephone number is used purely for home use. This BT line has Broadband enabled. This provides Internet access and via the Internet, several more telephone lines:
- 01935 389xxx Home number 1 (Using the BT line. Not normally used except for 999)
- 01935 80xxxx Home number 2 (our usual home telephone number)
- 01935 808094 Yeovil Business number 1
- 01747 898142 Shaftesbury Business number 2
- 01258 808152 Blandford Business number 3
- 01458 888158 Street / Glastonbury Business number 4
In our premises we have a voice over IP telephone system so that we can make and receive calls in the office and in the house. Altogether there are 6 telephone extensions connected to the system. There are two telephone extensions located at other sites so that calls from customers can be received there.
With so many incoming numbers you might ask how do we know who is calling? This problem is solved by having each telephone display the number that was called as well as the calling number.
Each number costs £1.99 per month to rent – making a total cost of £9.95. Our call costs are very low as the system routes all calls though Voiptalk. Typically we spend about £14 per month on telephone calls.
| Total costs for our Internet based telephony system | |
| BT Line Rental | £11 |
| BT Calls | £2.50 |
| Broadband | £25 |
| Voiptalk number rental | £9.95 |
| Calls (all Internet based) | £14.00 Including mobiles |
| TOTAL | £62 per month Internet based |
| Total costs if we had individual business lines | |
| First line rental | £11 |
| Broadband | £25 |
| Rental for 5 lines (instead of Internet based) | £55 |
| Calls (at higher rate) | £57 |
| TOTAL | £148 per month BT Landlines |
What cannot be shown in cost comparison terms is the fact that we are using different numbers from different locations. These are very expensive to provide over standard BT lines. It is also impossible to show that we can receive more than one call on the same number. For example, we can make a call on 01935 8080094 and receive a call on the same number at the same time.
Other Benefits
There are other benefits that are obtained by running an Internet based telephone system that we enjoy. Here are some of them:
- Built in voicemail – no need for answering machines or BT 1571
- Call logging so that call statistics can be measured. Also, who called when
- Only one cabling system. Only computer type cabling (cat5) was installed apart from a cable for a single fax machine
- A “dial plan”. This allows calls to be routed to particular locations at specific times. Calls are answered not just at our office
- Inexpensive technology as it is based on a computer. An equivalent analogue telephone system would be much more expensive