What is Hosted Telephony and How Does It Work?

Published on 30 November 2020

Have you been thinking about changing up the way you run communications in your office or commercial building? Traditional PSTN analogue telephone systems are quickly becoming outdated – and hosted VoIP (voice over internet protocol), offering you access to cloud-based voice communication, is quickly sweeping in as the leading standard for efficient, flexible comms across the world. But what exactly is hosted telephony? How does it work, and why might it benefit you, your team, and your customers in the long run?

Hosted Phone System Basics

A hosted phone system is based off-site. By this, we mean that it’s completely accessible via the cloud, hosted by a service provider on a pay-per-user basis. This means that in addition to hosting all of the traditional looking telephony in the office, the system extends to be available on a more flexible basis. All you will need is a user login and a device which is compatible with cloud telecommunications to add remote devices to your system as an extension of what you have in place already.

How it Works

Hosted VoIP is enabled through the internet. VoIP is a cloud based telephony system, and you, as a business, will be able to run incoming and outgoing calls over your internet service. Essentially, this allows you to connect VoIP enabled handsets to the internet to make and receive high definition voice communications, as opposed to having to traditional phone systems connected to antiquated hardware such as PBX (private branch exchange) via analogue lines.

As you can imagine, this means that you can connect a variety of different devices and pieces of hardware to VoIP hosted services in the cloud. Providing you have smartphones, laptops & desktops with the applicable apps and handsets with VoIP technology built-in, you will always be able to connect to calls wherever your device may be. You could even take your VoIP enabled deskphone home, plug in and make calls as if you were sat in your office.

What are the Benefits of Hosted Telephony?

One of the major benefits of hosted VoIP and cloud based telephony, is that you can make and receive calls that ordinarily would be desk-bound…anywhere. While PSTN has served us well over the decades, the world is growing more efficient and VoIP phone systems are a more convenient option that will save you time, money, and enable flexible working locations.

Traditionally, if you wanted to make and receive calls while you were working from home, or on the move, a mobile device would be the ideal tool. With VoIP and hosted cloud telephony, you can make and receive calls via apps with your smartphone or laptop, displaying your geographical office number that your contacts recognise. This means that if you are working from home or other location, your usual direct dial and extension numbers remain effective and you can make calls and answer office telephone traffic, wherever you are.

Working from home has exploded massively this year and with a flexible, hosted telephony solution, you can share your VoIP connectivity with staff members via apps on their smartphones, laptops and tablets. This means there’s no need to stay tethered to a central hub at the office.

Cloud based telephony is offered on a per user licence basis and typically includes bundled minutes meaning that you would rarely have any additional spend over and above the monthly per user licence fee if you are calling UK landline and UK mobile numbers. Packages can be sourced if you are regularly making calls outside of the UK.

With BT reportedly set to untangle and replace traditional landlines by 2025, now is the time to go for hosted telephony – it’s great value, it’s hassle-free, and it’s time to get involved.

Thank you for reading our blog post. If you would like to find out more about hosted telephony or would like to get hosted telephony setup in your business, contact us today on 01908 044202. Alternatively, you can send a message via our contact page.