Virtual Numbers – a Local Presence for your Global Business

The movement towards VoIP over the traditional PSTN is quickly growing steam. However many people still don’t understand what it can do and how switching to VoIP can be beneficial to their enterprise. There are hundreds of blogs, articles and websites dedicated to demystifying VoIP. But consumers and businesses still have to separate the actual facts from exaggerated marketing claims. It can certainly be overwhelming at times, especially if your company is looking to try VoIP for the first time.

How Can You Deploy VoIP?

Before we get into how VoIP is good for companies, let’s look at the options that users have available to them. VoIP can be deployed in 2 flavors – as a hosted service or on premise SIP deployment. Most business organizations find it easy to understand SIP deployments since they’re pretty close to the more traditional PBX systems.

If a company wanted to get PSTN phone services, they would contract with a phone carrier and purchase the necessary equipment such as PBX boxes. The internal phone system would be connected through copper lines to the external world. The on premise SIP deployment functions similarly.

The only difference is that the hardware is SIP compliant – so it can VoIP technology. The ‘trunk’ connecting the company to the ITSP (Internet Telephony Service Provider) happens to be a data connection instead of copper cables.

Hosted VoIP on the other hand, frees the business from having to maintain their own phone systems. All the hardware and equipment is operated by the provider. PBX and phones services are provided over the Internet.

What Can VoIP Do for Your Business?

VoIP brings many advantages to an organization, as many consumers can attest. First and foremost is cost savings. This is perhaps the biggest reason that companies look to VoIP in the first place. VoIP optimizes and streamlines the phones as well. VoIP has changed how existing features like voicemail operate. Vendors have also introduced hundreds of new features that were simply not possible with PSTN systems.

One such feature is virtual numbers. This feature is rapidly becoming vital to businesses. What makes this one feature so important? It’s the global nature of business communication. The world’s economies are increasingly integrated. You’d be hard pressed to find a business that never has to make international calls for any reason. Businesses expand to new markets, work with partners abroad and even have office scattered across several countries. In all these situations, virtual numbers can help.

Virtual Numbers – How Do They Work?

Virtual numbers are possible because of the inherent nature of VoIP. We’re all familiar with PSTN landlines. If you’ve ever moved houses or an office, you know the hassle of taking your number with you. You have to call the phone company and request that the line be moved to a new location and then wait for the change to happen.

VoIP doesn’t have that issue at all. This is because a phone number is not tied to a location, rather it is tied to a person or user. Basically VoIP phone numbers are location independent. It means you can take your number with you when you move somewhere else.

This basically means a business can purchase virtual numbers that have the local area codes for any city, state or country. Even if they don’t have a presence there or a specific office address (although some countries now require physical residence as a prerequisite for buying virtual numbers).

Basically a user can make calls to that number as if it were local to them, thus bypassing heavy long distance charges. You can also make calls with that number as a local call, instead of using up your international calling minutes.

How Can You Use Virtual Numbers?

At first glance, you might not think virtual numbers are very useful but they do come in handy. One of the most common ways of using it is to set up a local presence in a foreign country. Suppose you want to expand your business into several new markets. You can buy virtual numbers with the local area code and have customers contact your company through that instead of your regular phone number. You save customers a bundle since they don’t have to pay the exorbitant long distance rates.

Establishing a local presence also builds trust with consumers. Calling a number with a local area code makes users think you’re close by or a local business even if you’re actually hundreds of miles away. You can even purchase multiple numbers at a time in different countries. Now you don’t have to constrained by geographical boundaries. Virtual numbers and hosted VoIP let you use the phones anywhere just like email or any other modern internet based service. So get started with virtual numbers today and see how your global business can benefit!