As a hosted telephony provider, a common question we get asked is “what actually is hosted telephony and how does it work”.
Well, we’re here to explain exactly that.
With telecoms being such an important asset to your business, making the right investment is important. Hosted telephony is just one of the many options available to your business.
What is hosted telephony?
Hosted telephony is a cloud based solution that provides your businesses telephone calls. Instead of having a physical, on-premise telephone system, hosted telephony uses the cloud to control your businesses incoming and outgoing calls.
Hosted telephony is the new, modern form of business communications. As more and more businesses move to cloud based technologies, they’re choosing to go for hosted telephony solutions over the traditional on-premise, analogue alternatives.
Hosted telephony is a great alternative to old fashioned on-premise telephone systems for many reasons, including:
- Cost reduction
- Better quality calls
- More features
As with any modern technology, hosted telephony has burst onto the telecoms scene in the past few years—with the traditional, on-premise PBX being made redundant in the process.
How does hosted telephony work?
The way that hosted telephony works is actually very simple. Hosted telephony uses your businesses existing broadband connection for your voice call traffic, as well as your regular internet traffic.
Your voice traffic travels down your internet connection to our hosted telephony platform, which is hosted in the cloud. Once in the cloud, our platform routes your call to the correct destination. It’s that simple.
As you can see, hosted telephony uses cloud technology to connect your entire business in one, unified telecoms environment.
Because hosted telephony uses the cloud, this means that you’ll have access to enterprise-level features, at a fraction of the cost of what they used to be. As you’re probably aware, cloud technology enables smaller business to work more efficiently, and reduce their running costs.
How does hosted telephony differ from an on-premise system?
The main difference between hosted telephony and on-premise telephone systems is their location. On-premise telephone systems are physical boxes that are located in your office. However, a hosted telephone system is located in the cloud.
That is pretty much the only difference between the two.
Technically, a hosted telephone system is just an on-premise system that has been moved to a data centre, and your business can connect to it via your internet, rather than your telephone lines.
A big concern of many businesses that are thinking of switching to hosted telephony is that it is totally different, and they’ll have to change their entire system because of this. This is not the case.
From a users perspective, the two are very similar. A phone on the desk that allows you to make and receive calls from your extension/DDI. With controls such as holding, forwarding, transferring and more. But as a business, you’ll have access to great features, such as auto attendants, hunt groups, call recording and even wallboards.
Where does ‘VoIP’ come into this?
VoIP is an acronym that is commonly banded around the telecoms industry, but often misunderstood. VoIP stands for voice over IP, and refers to the technology used to send your voice to and from your hosted telephony platform.
Voice traffic using your broadband connection uses VoIP. This includes hosted telephony, which makes use of VoIP for your telephone calls.
VoIP is a great replacement for the traditional ISDN telephone lines. In 2025, the UK will switch off it’s main ISDN network, meaning that any business that hasn’t covered to VoIP may be at risk or losing their communications. While there is no need to panic, as we’re still a few years off it yet, it is something to consider when you come round to upgrading your telephone system.
Why choose hosted telephony?
With many businesses turning to cloud technology to provide their communications, it is important to understand how you might be able to benefit from hosted telephony.
1. Cost reduction
Arguably, the best benefit of hosted telephony is its cost. Hosted telephony is essentially a subscription service. Which means that you’ll only pay for the exact number of users you’ll need. This makes it a lot more cost effective when compared to an on-premise PBX, which are often ‘overkill’.
It is because of this, that hosted telephony is considerably cheaper than it’s on-premise counterparts. Only paying for exactly what you need, and with no call charges or line rental, you can quickly see how the savings add up.
2. Mobility (mobile apps)
Hosted telephony is built for the modern, mobile business era. Because hosted telephony uses cloud based technology, you can access your businesses telephone system from anywhere, and not just your office.
A great way to do this is using our free mobile app. The mobile app connects directly to your hosted telephone system, allowing users to access their phone from anywhere—as long as they have an internet connection. This is ideal for home/remote workers, as they can make and receive calls as though they’re sat at their desk.
3. No need for multiple telephone lines
With a hosted telephony solution, you can do away with telephone lines, and all the charges associated with these lines. Traditionally, a business would need to have multiple telephone lines in order to support multiple concurrent calls—but not anymore.
The reason why you don’t need these telephone lines is because hosted telephony uses your businesses existing broadband connection. As we mentioned before, when you upgrade to hosted telephony, your broadband connection carries both your voice and data simultaneously. Voice is prioritised over this connection, to ensure your calls are always crisp and don’t drop out.
How do I upgrade to hosted telephony?
All you need to get up and running with a hosted telephone system is a broadband connection. It’s really that simple. There are no fancy requirements or costly installations. All we do is provision your telephone system in the cloud, and you plug in your phones.
We can even port over your businesses existing telephone number, so that you don’t have to go through the complex process of changing your main phone number. It really is the future.
For more information about our hosted telephony solution, give us a call on 03331 031 021 or email sales@bytesdigital.co.uk
