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Upgrading to Business VoIP: Can I Use My Old Hardware?

Upgrading to Business VoIP: Can I Use My Old Hardware?

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4 min read

Blog Articles

Quick Summary

Upgrading to a VoIP phone system? Learn how to adapt your existing hardware to VoIP.

Some businesses have long been convinced that VoIP is the future of business voice communications. However, there are a number of concerns that can keep the people in charge from pulling the trigger.

What is VoIP?

Lost investment in terms of existing hardware, for example, can be a worry. If your business has spent thousands on desk phones, it might be difficult to convince those in charge to throw out those same thousands.

Fortunately, VoIP is incredibly adaptable when it comes to a business’ needs. Here are some of the methods by which you can continue using your existing hardware with a new VoIP phone system.

VoIP Adaptors

VoIP adaptors are handy little devices that connect to your traditional desk phone, making it compatible with a VoIP phone system.

Obviously, a traditional analogue desk phone has no way of connecting to the internet on its own; whereas VoIP phones have an integrated LAN port by which they can connect to your network via ethernet cable, traditional desk phones have no such port. Nor do they have the internal components necessary to digitise their signal.

A VoIP adaptor performs both of these missing functions. Acting like the microfilter that sits between your phone-line socket and the ethernet cable in your home’s VDSL network setup, the adaptor carries the signal from phone-line to ethernet cable and out to the wider internet.

In the process, the adaptor also digitises the signal and compressed according to the particular transport protocols and standards used in VoIP.

In this fashion, VoIP adaptors empower you to continue using your old analogue phones even with a modern business phone system.

At a minimum of £30 per unit, however, if you’re a large business, this won’t be an altogether low-cost solution. In switching to VoIP, though, savings in other areas are significant. With VoIP, for example, there’s no need to maintain any on-site hardware, meaning you’ll save on the space and costs typically involved with caring for an on-site PBX. Monthly fees and regular call costs, too, will be significantly cheaper. Over the course of a year, this can easily add up to offset the cumulative cost of VoIP adaptors.

VoIP Apps

There’s always the chance that you want to limit, or even eliminate, your adoption of VoIP adaptors to enable the continued use of your analogue desk phones, but can’t or won’t spend even more on brand new VoIP phones for all your staff.

Fortunately, with the Yay.com VoIP apps, your staff can take and make business calls with all of the expected VoIP phone features right from their personal device. In this way, not only does your business save on the cost of new VoIP phones or adaptors for every member of staff, but there’s evidence that your staff could even become more productive.

The BYOD (bring your own device) mode of working has shown signs of improving staff morale, job satisfaction and productivity. By encouraging your employees to use ‘softphones’ rather than desk phones, you could benefit from a staff that produces more value for your customers and clients whilst saving on the cost of new hardware.

Phone Books

Others may be keen to upgrade and even to adopt a fleet of shiny new VoIP phones for all of their staff - if only it didn’t seem like such a gargantuan task. Luckily at Yay.com, we have many tools available to make switching over to VoIP as effortless as possible.

One such tool is our Phone Books function, whereby you can import huge lists of your existing contacts into your account and be presented with auto-generated credentials to provision new VoIP phones with these lists of contacts already installed.

If you decide not to use existing analogue phones and to invest in new VoIP phones for your staff instead, features such as these will make migrating your system infinitely easier.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to switch your business over to a VoIP phone system but are concerned about the cost of new hardware, you need not worry. With VoIP apps, it’s unnecessary to purchase any new hardware at all. Those who are set on continuing to use an on-site PBX can extend the life of theirs with a SIP trunk and VoIP adaptors are available for those who want to continue using old analogue phones with business VoIP. Lastly, if and when you do decide to upgrade to a full set of VoIP desk phones, migration will be effortless when you use tools like Yay.com’s Phone Books for quick and easy phone provisioning.

Upgrading to Business VoIP: Can I Use My Old Hardware?

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Article By

Alex - Content Manager at Yay.com

Alex

Content Manager at Yay.com

ISO 27001 Business Continuity Accreditation ISO 22301 Business Continuity Accreditation Cyber Essentials Certificate of Assurance G-Cloud accredited by the Crown Commercial Service
ISO 27001 Business Continuity Accreditation ISO 22301 Business Continuity Accreditation Cyber Essentials Certificate of Assurance G-Cloud accredited by the Crown Commercial Service