Small business owners have the opportunity to take their calls from any location where they can go online using high speed Internet as Bell Canada introduces a hosted Voice over IP (VoIP) service for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

In a nutshell, VoIP is a technology that makes it possible to have voice conversations over the Internet. While there are many free and for-fee online phones that let you talk from computer-to-computer or even from a computer to a landline, the new offering from Bell brings in unique features not found in competing services.

One of the most promising things about this new service is that you can use an existing phone number, even if you move. Currently, many business owners are forced to change numbers or set-up expensive forwarding system in order to keep an old phone number when they move.

How it works
To use the service you get a small piece of hardware that plugs into your Internet connection and a standard phone. Once connected you make your phonecalls using a regular phone and there will be no long distance fees for any calls in North America.

You can also bring your phone system with you when travelling on business. John Wiese, Vice President of small and medium business marketing at Bell, explained that right now you need to bring the actual hardware device to use your phone services from a remote location. However, he expects that within 60 days users will be able to install a software program on their laptop that will let them access the system without the physical hardware.

This way, by simply instructing the system to find you on the road you can receive and make calls from remote locations, provided that you can connect to a high speed Internet account. The service works on any high speed Internet connection, such as DSL or cable.

This feature and the fact that you can get phone numbers in different area codes are probably the most important differences between the Bell offering and that of competiting products.

Other features that are included with the service include:

• Conferencing
• Secondary phone numbers that can be in different area codes
• Call forward / find me so that you can use a single number for multiple phone devices
• Online management tools
• Caller ID, call display and call answer

The cost for the hosted service is $64.95 a month plus $5 for each additional line. Currently the system allows for two lines, but this may be expanded in the future. In addition to the hosted solution businesses can purchase the equipment outright, in which case they would buy or lease the unit. Costs for a four line system purchased outright would typically range from $2000 to $4000 a month.

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