As technology makes advanced communications more accessible and more affordable to the public, Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) is seeing a remarkable surge of popularity, especially among small businesses. Indeed, these days it seems we’re hard pressed to find a company that isn’t going with VoIP, and that trend will only continue. Global News Wire projects that by 2021, the VoIP services market will hit $140 billion, up from $83 billion in 2015. Meanwhile, VoIP Review predicts a market value of $194.5 billion by 2024, reflecting an increase of more than 130 percent in less than a decade.
What makes VoIP so popular, even necessary, for small businesses? Let’s look a few factors that may be driving the market.
Large-Budget Features at Small-Budget Prices
As with most business trends, economics seem to play the largest role in the migration to VoIP. With voice and video communication technology now available over the Internet, small businesses can eliminate the cost of the parallel infrastructure of PBX phone lines. In addition, VoIP technology offers a whole slate of features once inaccessible to small businesses—features that cost a fraction of what they would on conventional phone lines. From virtual phone lines to virtually unlimited conference calling to advanced hold-queue features, VoIP allows small companies to compete with large ones on a grand scale.
Greater Mobility and Flexibility
Conventional phones work from conventional wiring; VoIP works from the cloud, which means you can theoretically conduct business anywhere you can get an Internet connection. Mobile phones and laptops allow business owners and their employees to communicate with any customer from almost anywhere on the planet—even while traveling. Your “office” can now be a taxi, an airport lounge (and some airplanes), a hotel room in Hong Kong or a coffee shop in Paris. From a single office—or even a single computer—you can run a global enterprise with VoIP.
VoIP Grows with You
With conventional systems, expanding your business usually meant expanding your office space, installing more cabling and phone lines, etc. With VoIP, expansion means buying a bit of extra hardware and perhaps a few more phone numbers. Within a few minutes, you can upgrade and expand your entire system—and when you need more, you just repeat the process.
As the VoIP market continues to mushroom, the technology itself continues to improve, making digital communication faster, quieter and more seamless than ever. To learn more about how VoIP can help your small business compete like a large one, call 1-877-NetServ today.