VOIP Voice Over IP - The phone system with no boundaries

Take your office with you anywhere, with 8x8 Voice over IP!

In the computer world they are always waiting for and talking about the “killer app”. A real game changer.  VOIP is still new to many of us and I have to say it’s been a game changer for how we can do business. 

Though I’ve “known” about VOIP (Voice over IP) for a few years, I have to say that even for a pretty geeky guy like me it was a little scary. I mean giving up Ma Bell and putting your trust in the internet to handle all your communications!! Yikes!  But late last year, our lease was up and part of the move would include moving our phone system, or buying a new one. (Moving would be around $1,000 buying would be quite a bit more.)  Our phone bills under the best package were about $80 per line per month. 

I had heard from a few clients that with VOIP, one could actually take their phone home with them and plug it into their router and know one would know they were sitting in their bath robe. I liked that concept. 

I thought that beyond the bathrobe concept it would be great to give current and future employees the flexibility to work from home without losing the company phone system. Calls could be transferred to them as though they were sitting in the office next door. 

So I started looking at services and plans. I found a variety of plans and providers, but settled in on a company called 8x8 based on a referral from a partner who had used them for a few years. 

In a nutshell, here’s the deal... 8x8 is your switchboard in the cloud. You buy your IP Phones from them for around $75 each. You get them in a day. You plug the ethernet cable that goes into your PC into the phone and another supplied cable from the phone into your PC. They call you and walk you through the setup and in under 30 minutes you are in business. 

You can transfer calls to other extensions. You get voicemail, an auto attendant... you know dial 1 for this and 2 for that. You get an email with any messages for your extension that you missed. You can take your phone home or wherever and plug it into a router or PC jack and make and receive calls as though you were at your desk. 

They just added an app for the iPhone that let’s me use the iPhone on WIfi to take and make calls plus all the other features.

See above.  (I’m dying to try it on my iPad).  

They also just added a feature where you can use your laptop as a phone. Just sign in on the 8x8 web site and click a button and start taking calls. 


Note as of 4/3/2010. GREAT NEWS it works with the IPAD!!

We pay about $30 per line per month vs $80. The iPhone app is $4.99 per mo. per extension that uses it. 

If the internet goes down, you are down. Which is not good, but if you can have people in different locations, someone will still be able to answer the phone. 

In 3 months, we have had one outage of about 3 hours and a couple of very minor problems. 

Call quality is usually very good, but call us at 847-382-4500 and see. 

Oh and yes we were able to easily transfer our phone number.