VoIP (voice over internet protocol)

VoIP turns your phone calls into data sent over the internet. Most small businesses that have changed phone systems in recent years have moved to VoIP, often a cloud-hosted service or Microsoft Teams Phone. You get features that used to need an expensive on-site system: auto-attendants (“press 1 for scheduling”), call queues, voicemail to email, ring groups and apps that let staff answer the office line on a mobile.

The trade-off is that your phones now depend on your internet connection and your network. If the internet goes down, so do the phones — unless you have failover or the provider can automatically forward calls to mobiles. Choppy or robotic-sounding calls are usually a network problem: not enough upload bandwidth, Wi-Fi congestion, or phones not given priority over other traffic.

For a medical or dental practice, the phone is the front door. Patients call to book, reschedule and ask questions, and a dead phone line means lost appointments. If voicemails or call recordings contain patient information, check that your phone provider will sign a business associate agreement (BAA).

Example: a dental office moves to a cloud phone system, puts the desk phones on their own VLAN with traffic priority, and adds a cellular backup line. During a storm-related internet outage, calls keep ringing through. Check how much bandwidth your calls need with the internet speed calculator, and read our network, Wi-Fi and phone guide.