VoIP for Business: When Broadband Goes Down, What Happens?

In the last year, almost 70% of consumers have experienced frustration or hung up because they were unable to reach a "real person." For organizations of all sizes, being reachable via phone is critical to delivering satisfactory customer service interactions.

Nearly 80% of buyers have "bailed" on a transaction or vendor due to a poor service interaction. If your clients receive a dial tone, "service not available message" or a busy signal when they try to reach your company, you could experience a drastic loss of brand reputation or customer defection to your competitors.

Why Internet Connectivity Matters for VoIP Phone Systems

With Voice over IP (VoIP) phone systems, Internet connectivity is critical to phone operations. Prospective VoIP customers may delay switching to this cost-effective option for voice services due to a fear of long periods of downtime or being unreachable for their clients.

The key to ensuring you experience reliable VoIP is selecting a vendor who offers built-in redundancy to their customers to ensure you'll have voice services even if your internet connection ceases to work. In this blog, you'll learn about selecting a broadband connection that supports VoIP continuity, and the types of redundancy that can protect your brand even if you lose the internet.

What Happens to VoIP When Broadband Goes Down?

When your organization loses its broadband internet connection, you'll lose VoIP service. Before a VoIP implementation, it's critical to have a resilient, high-quality internet connection in place. One of the most effective ways to ensure strong continuity and uptime (availability) with your broadband connection is to make the switch from copper or cable Internet connectivity to a fiber-optic connection.

Benefits of Fiber for VoIP

Fiber-optic Internet connectivity offers some strong reliability benefits over copper or cable circuits, in addition to being faster and having the potential for much higher bandwidth. Fiber Internet transmits data as light, as opposed to electronic signals. This improves business uptime due to reduced risk of inclement weather-related issues, significantly improved durability, and a diminished likelihood of radio interference from industrial equipment close to your cabling.

Additionally, fiber Internet is not reliant on the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) infrastructure that supports copper wiring. In many regions, ILEC is antiquated and has a high potential for circuit outages. Fiber Internet is typically deployed in a ring structure, which creates an additional level of protection in case of fiber cuts.

Ultimately, making the switch to fiber internet is a powerful option to ensure continuity of your broadband connection, by protecting yourself against weather conditions, interference, and antiquated infrastructures that may experience frequent outages.

Additional Forms of VoIP Redundancy

While fiber-optic Internet offers some major reliability benefits over copper or cable Internet, it's still possible that you will experience service outages. While fiber is incredibly durable, there have been instances of individuals who cut fiber as a form of vandalism. To avoid the diminished risk of a loss of connection while running VoIP over fiber, having redundancy built into your company's infrastructure is important.

Having a backup plan can allow your business to continue with voice transmissions in the rare instance your fiber internet should experience a serious outage. The most efficient means of ensuring VoIP connectivity is typically to arrange for calls to be forwarded to employee mobile phones.

Most reliable VoIP providers offer mobile connectivity, which allows employees to be reachable via an app on their smartphones which offers the same functionality and features as on-site VoIP phones. Calls can seamlessly be routed to an employee's mobile device, with no more disruption in service than the few seconds required to make the switch.

Built-In VoIP Redundancy Matters

If you're considering implementing or upgrading VoIP, opting for built-in redundancy is crucial. Organizations should never begin considering disaster routing after they experience their first period of downtime due to interrupted broadband service.

Designing redundancy into your infrastructure and VoIP system is critical to prevent periods of being unreachable by your clients. With additional internet options and automatic disaster routing options for business calls, you can ensure your business phone system is always available.

For more information on Atlantech's business class phone solutions, click here to discover more about our reliable voice options.