The upcoming digital switchover has to be completed for households and businesses alike by the end of January 2027, but there is no reason to wait until the deadline is imminent before getting your business switched over.
However, this may not be the only switching you might want to do. Your existing telephone service provider may have already contacted you with a new proposed package as part of the switch from analogue services, but, using our new business telecoms switching service, you may decide this is the time to switch telecoms provider.
A reason for doing so might be that you are already not wholly satisfied with the deals you have been getting, either due to the price charged or the standard of service received. However, it may be that you start by signing up for new digital services from your existing provider and then consider changing at a later date.
Price alone may not be your reason for doing so. There may be an obvious cause for change through persistent poor service, but you might be better able to judge whether you should switch by appreciating just what your digital services should be like and whether you can do better.
What To Expect From VoIP
A key issue in this instance is what you get from your Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP. This is the mode of digital telephone delivery that will replace the existing landline services that come through cables laid under the street (often many years ago).
Instead, VoIP provides telecommunications over the internet, converting analogue voice messages into digital packages of information that are then turned back into audio messages when you pick up the phone and take or receive a call. You will already use this technology whenever you speak to someone on a smartphone.
VoIP should give you a series of significant advantages over the analogue landline systems you have used previously:
- The cost is lower
- Better quality sound
- Easy to set up
- The ability to access your business number remotely from outside the office
- Easy to scale up by adding more users
VoIP also offers additional potential benefits, such as call forwarding, voicemail-to-email (where you can use your email to pick up voice messages) and video conferencing. You may enjoy three-way conversations, as well as anonymous call refusal (although the latter may be of more use to domestic customers seeking to maintain privacy).
This array of benefits should provide plenty of reasons to be excited, not to mention spur businesses on to migrate to VoIP adoption as soon as possible. But what if the new service falls short of providing all these benefits at a high level of quality?
Common VoIP Problems
It is important to note that any telephony system can have its failures. Indeed, one of the reasons for the digital switchover is that the existing wire-based landlines are increasingly prone to failures, while approaching obsolescence means many makers of parts are no longer supplying them, making hardware problems trickier to fix.
VoIP should be much more reliable just for this reason, but it is not immune to problems. The issue is whether your telephony provider, whenever it is incumbent on them to find the solution, manages to do so.
Among common problems with VoIP is poor call quality. Sometimes this can be caused by a lack of bandwidth, but one particularly irritating problem is that of network jitter. This is where packets of data are delayed or arrive in the wrong order, which means the sound quality is greatly reduced. This is caused by network delays.
Another issue is that of dropped calls, where the call cuts out suddenly. Once again, this tends to happen when the firmware is not up to date.
Finding A Solution
The most technically-minded can sometimes find in-house fixes or install solutions themselves to tackle these and other problems, but for most businesses, it would be unreasonable to expect them to have great personal technical expertise in VoIP. You just want to be able to make and receive calls where you can hear clearly and don’t get cut off.
Ideally, your provider should provide the expertise to troubleshoot such issues and ensure they are resolved. But if they do persist, or your provider is slow to respond, you may feel you can do a lot better elsewhere.
If so, our telecoms switching service is for companies like yours. For whatever reason you may have for feeling you have had a raw deal or poor service, or simply because you think you can get better elsewhere, we provide the means for you to switch and get the high-quality VoIP services you have been seeking.
