How Hosted VoIP Keeps Communication Open During an Emergency

While having open lines of communication are obviously vital for day-to-day business operations, this need becomes even more critical during an emergency to ensure that colleagues are safe, to coordinate reassignments or re-deployments, and to connect with customers and other stakeholders.

In light of the above, a growing number of businesses are making the switch to a reliable hosted VoIP phone system; especially if they experience “brown outs” on a regular basis – which is very common in certain areas of the country, including throughout New England and across the Northeast.

Below, we highlight 4 key ways how hosted VoIP keeps communication open during an emergency:

How Hosted VoIP Handles Disaster Recovery

1. Geographically Dispersed Cloud Infrastructure

Leading hosted VoIP providers use a geographically dispersed cloud infrastructure, which ensures that local power outages will not cause your system to go offline or even become partially inaccessible. Rather, you will have full, complete access – even if your neighbors in the office next door or across the street are completely without service for minutes, hours or even days. 

2. Automatic Failover Response

In an emergency (or even in a non-emergency for that matter), it is possible for your ISP to go down. However, you can affordably implement automatic failover response mechanisms – such as using a secondary data connection, and using virtual autonomous network aggregation -- to immediately switch over to an operational data connection. 

3. Emergency Services

A persistent myth about hosted VoIP systems is that they do not offer emergency “911” service. This is categorically untrue. In fact, interconnected VoIP service providers are required under FCC rules to provide E911 services to all of their customers. This includes routing all 911 calls to the appropriate local Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), as well as the subscriber’s call back number and location information (if the PSAP is capable of receiving it).

4. Mobile Apps

Incidents like flooding, fires, evacuations and other emergencies can make it impossible for employees to use their certified VoIP phones. However, they can easily launch an app on their mobile phones, tablets or laptops and reconnect to the system from anywhere, and at anytime. This is particularly beneficial when employees are obliged to stay out of the office for prolonged periods of time.

The Bottom Line

While cost savings, scalability, flexibility and advanced calling features are the best known and most widely discussed hosted VoIP benefits, it is our opinion that the inherent capacity of a hosted VoIP to keep communication lines open during an emergency is arguably the MOST important feature: especially when it can mean the difference between employees being safe and connected, and customers being served and satisfied.

To learn more, contact Votacall today and schedule your free consultation.