Can small businesses rely on VoIP?
Shawna Hampton, a small-business owner in the US, knows she always needs to have a backup for her Skype internet telephone service. Hampton, who runs what is essentially a one-woman web-development company, said she was glad she had her mobile phone handy when she was unable to make or receive calls from clients for 48 hours during last week's Skype outage. She had decided to make Skype's $40-a-year unlimited domestic calling her primary phone system to save money when she started her company. "I always knew I needed a backup for Skype," she said. "I was annoyed by the disruption, but since I was able to use my mobile phone, it wasn't that big of a deal." Hampton's point is well taken: while many large companies have already made the switch to IP telephones, small business may not want to cut off their traditional phone services just yet. Indeed, many experts agree that it's risky for small businesses to rely too heavily on services that use VoIP technology that leverages the public internet. The reason is simple. The public internet is still what is considered a "best-effort" network. Priority is not given to any type of traffic once it hits the public internet. And even though voice packets don't take up much bandwidth, the technology is very sensitive to latency, which means that late-arriving packets could distort voice quality or cut off voice calls altogether.