Troubleshoot Dropped Calls on Your VoIP Business Phone System

More and more businesses are switching from a traditional landline phone system to a VoIP phone system, so they can take advantage of substantial cost savings, enhanced calling features, total mobility and scalability, improved employee productivity, multiple levels of redundancy and other valuable benefits that can move their business forward. 

If your business has already made the switch to a VoIP business phone system and your team is experiencing occasional dropped calls, here are some simple troubleshooting tips to help you pinpoint the issue and solve the problem:

How to Avoid Dropped Calls on VoIP Business Phones

Disable Automatic Disconnect

Check to see if your VoIP system is set up to automatically disconnect calls after a set period of time, such as 60 minutes, 120 minutes, 180 minutes, and so on. This is a safeguard measure, and meant to prevent invalid and unauthorized calls from using your monthly allotment of minutes.

To workaround this automatic disconnect feature, you can either have your employees hang up and re-dial the other party in order to reset the timer. Or, you can extend the time (e.g. move it from 120 minutes to 180 minutes) or disable this safeguard feature entirely.

Deactivate SIP ALG

The router that connects your VoIP certified phones to your broadband internet connection may have the SIP ALG (application level gateway) feature activated, which can break down SIP packets and make them unreadable – therefore leading to dropped calls. (It can also cause one-way audio where you can hear the other party but they cannot hear you or you have a problem receiving calls).

The good news is that turning off SIP ALG is relatively simple, and you should be able to find information online that is specific to your router’s make and model.  

Increase Bandwidth

The root cause of occasional dropped calls may simply be that you need more Internet bandwidth (i.e. speed). This is often the case if you business has an internet package that is geared towards residential customers with less robust needs.

Solving this problem is quite easy: simply call your ISP and ask them to upgrade you to one of their business internet packages. The increase in speed will immediately fix the problem, plus make everyone’s web and email experience much faster!

The Bottom Line

The above workarounds and solutions will solve most, if not all of your VoIP business phone system dropped call issues.

However, if you’re still dealing with the problem and aren’t sure where to turn, then contact the experts at Votacall today. It could be that the equipment you’re using (e.g. certified VoIP phones, managed router) need to be upgraded, or that your VoIP provider may not providing you with the leading-edge hosted infrastructure that you need.