Can small businesses rely on VoIP?
<<<... Will the public net suffice?
But some companies, such as 8x8 and Vonage, are marketing their services as a replacement for traditional telephone services. 8x8 offers a hosted PBX service called Virtual Office that provides call functions such as four-digit calling, call forwarding and auto-attendant, plus some unified communications features, such as email-accessible voice mail. A PBX, or private branch exchange, is used within a private telephone network and allows users to share a certain number of outside telephone lines for making phone calls. Like Skype, 8x8's service uses the public internet to carry voice packets. Huw Rees, vice president of sales and marketing for 8x8, said concerns about the reliability of VoIP over the internet are overblown. "The public internet is more than adequate for providing a business-class voice system if you have a decent broadband connection," he said. "We have more than 8,000 business customers who range in size from two to 600 employees using our service. There may have been issues with internet VoIP a few years ago, but not any more." But Chris Lyman, chief executive for a software PBX company called Fonality, disagrees with Rees. He said businesses that can't afford...