Business Phone Service in Alpena, MI

Choosing the Best Business Phone Service in Alpena, MI

There is a ton of competition for your business when it comes to providing your VoIP service to your Alpena, MI business. While this may seem daunting in that there are so many choices and so many offers that seem advantageous - it's a fact that competition can be used to the consuming businesses' advantage, and we can leverage one competitor against another for the absolute best results.

The most important questions you should consider are how many lines you currently need, how many lines you anticipate needing in the near/farther future, what phone features your business plans on using on a regular basis and what your overall budget is.

Next, do some shopping around to see which Alpena, MI VoIP service best suits your needs - and also ensure you do a good amount of research into the company's reviews by other business customers. Having reliable and quality telephone service is critical to any business, and so you want to make sure the vendor you do business with has a positive track record of happy and loyal customers that believe in the offering before you sign up.

How Does Traditional Business Phone Service Work in Alpena, MI?

Some businesses in Alpena, MI still run on a traditional PSTN phone service, and it's useful to understand how this type of service works. When calls are made using a traditional phone service, the calls must be sent through a PSTN, which is short for public switched telephone network. The PSTN is a nationwide system, and it's made of mobile networks, telephone lines, satellites and cables. The public switched telephone network was created over 100 years ago, and it was the first public phone system.

When compared to a VoIP service, it can cost significantly more money to use a traditional telephone service in Alpena, MI. The additional cost to use the PSTN is due to the massive size of the network, and the increased cost of maintaining the network. One of the major downsides of using the PSTN is the lack of reliability over long distances. Although a traditional phone service can work well for short distances, it has trouble sending call data across long distances.

A call that is made with the PSTN system must stop at several different parts of the network, and it must pass through equipment that is owned by different companies. The infrastructure is the major cost of using a PSTN, and the ongoing expenses needed to maintain the network keep the cost of traditional phone services high.

Alpena, MI Business Analog System with a PBX

For the most part, businesses in Alpena, MI use a private branch exchange to route calls received within the office. More commonly known as a PBX, this type of system allows the business phone service to function as it should with a variety of calling features such as conference calls, voicemail, call forwarding and multiple extensions.

Having a complete business phone service with a PBX requires buying various hardware that can cost over $1,000. This amount does not include the installation, configuration and ongoing maintenance that is necessary to ensure your phone service works for customer phone calls.

This is a pricey option especially when it is time to upgrade or expand the service in Alpena, MI. If you do not have an in-house technical staff, you will have to pay a professional for maintenance and to make any changes.

The last thing you should want is stifling business growth because you cannot afford to upgrade a traditional phone system to accommodate that growth. However, needing more hardware is inevitable when the time comes to add more extensions to your existing phone service.

With this in mind, take full advantage of the services of MyRatePlan to make useful comparisons of updating your business phone service. Taking the time to research service providers in Alpena, MI can help you avoid paying costly repairs for a PBX system that may very well become obsolete.