A business telephone system is a multiline telephone system typically used in business environments, encompassing systems ranging in technology from the key telephone system...
The installation already began with the previous command apt install 3cxpbx -y. When asked, Press Tab to select the <Ok> button and press Enter to accept the 3cx license agreement.
3CX License Agreement
Finish the Installation
When the installation is finished, you will see the following screen, which asks you to select the configuration option. I’d recommend typing 1 (which selects Using a Web Browser) and hitting Enter, which will show you the URL to configure 3CX.
Finishing the Installation
To configure 3CX and finish, you might look into this article.
COVID-19 has changed the way we work since 2020. Those of us who were fortunate enough to dodge layoffs and furloughs this year are now working from home and calling into Zoom, Microsoft’s Teams or Google Meet conversations instead of gathering around a conference table. All most all the VoIP and collaboration platforms have integrated Video conferencing into their services. And it has become a norm to attend meetings in Videoconferencing as it saves a lot of time.
Working from home may sound appealing to some, but having to perform all of your own IT work might be inconvenient. After all, the last thing you want is a technical problem precisely when it’s time to call in; there’s no one to assist in troubleshooting your connection, and it can really stymie a busy afternoon. Before you begin the call, double-check that everything is in order. Here’s how to be ready for video conference calls from home or wherever you’re working.
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Be Aware of Your Surroundings
Face wide windows so that they light you up; otherwise, the camera will struggle with exposure.
If you must appear on Video during your conversation, make sure you are aware of your surroundings. If you live on a busy street, close that window and turn on a light. Ethika Rahman, VoIP Bible’s leading camera analyst and a portrait photographer focusing on natural light sources, emphasizes that “all that matters is that you have a soft fill on your face.” As long as you avoid bright, direct light, a desk lamp with a shade should work. “Face wide windows so that they light you up; otherwise, the camera will struggle with exposure.”
Make Use of Your Creativity When Connecting
Download the proper desktop software or click a link to log into your account
Most businesses have a preferred service, such as Skype, Google Meet, or Zoom. If you’re using a desktop computer, all you need to do is download the proper desktop software or click a link to log into your account.
Facetime video call
FaceTime Now Permits Group Conversations And Receiving Phone Calls From Your Computer
However, if you need to think quickly and pick the best video call service for your needs, keep in mind that most mobile messaging applications include video capabilities. Some apps, such as Facebook Messenger, Signal, Android Messages, and Google Hangouts, allow limited video calling. Many of these services are also available as web and desktop applications. FaceTime now permits group conversations and receiving phone calls from your computer.
Get Rid of the Bandwidth Hogs
If you’re concerned that someone else is utilizing your connection’s resources, here’s how to check to see if someone is stealing your Wi-Fi.
One disadvantage of video chats is the distorted images and choppy sounds that come with low bandwidth. If you’re anticipating a video call or three, be sure your intelligent gadgets aren’t using up all of your internet bandwidth.
Suppose your children are streaming video games or YouTube. In that case, your robot vacuum is mapping your home, or heavy software packages are running on your PC, all of this activity may disturb your video chat at an inconvenient time.
First, examine your internet speed to see what you’re dealing with and whether you’re receiving what you paid for. If you’re concerned that someone else is utilizing your connection’s resources, here’s how to check to see if someone is stealing your Wi-Fi.
Log In Early in the Video Conference
Don’t wait until the meeting begins to discover that your connection is faulty or that your program isn’t working correctly
Don’t wait until the meeting begins to discover that your connection is faulty or that your program isn’t working correctly; test it before the conference. This is possible in Zoom by utilizing the program’s test feature. WebEx also provides a Personal Room for testing purposes.
In Skype, click your profile image, then go to Settings > Audio & Video Settings, where you should see a camera preview under the Video section. To evaluate audio quality, check for Sound Test Service in your Skype contacts.
Avoid WiFI, Go With a Wired Connection
If Wi-Fi continues to be a problem, dig out that dusty Ethernet cable for a direct connection
If Wi-Fi continues to be a problem, dig out that dusty Ethernet cable for a direct connection, which should eliminate any potential speed concerns or abrupt drops during video chatting. If your laptop lacks an Ethernet connector, you may purchase an inexpensive USB to Ethernet or Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter.
Avoid Audio Feedback
Don’t Rely On The Shaky Microphone And Speakers Built Into Your Computer.
Don’t rely on your computer’s shaky in-built microphone and speakers. When you’re on the phone, invest in a good Bluetooth headset or even gaming headphones. They effortlessly connect to your computer while also providing comfortable over-ear wear with a powerful microphone.
Don’t Forget to Plug in the Charger
Check that your laptop is connected in and turned on
Long conference calls may quickly deplete a laptop battery. And you don’t want to have to leave the meeting to look for your Charger when battery warnings flash on your screen. Check that your laptop is connected in and turned on. There are also portable chargers that are strong enough to recharge your laptop in an emergency. Our Editors’ Choice is the Omni 20+ 20000mah Laptop Power Bank, which has a capacity of 5 hours of backup.
Keep a Plan B
Whatever tool you use, have a backup plan in case something goes wrong, whether it’s switching to an audio-only conversation or giving up and understanding you’re in a meeting that could’ve been an email.
VOIP services have been around for a long time. It’s no secret that these services are gaining popularity. VOIP calls are an excellent approach to streamline your corporate communications. Whether you conduct cold calls or chat to existing consumers, you’re probably already using VOIP services. It might be difficult, though, if you wonder whether the VOIP services you have been using for years are genuinely any good.
This post will go over symptoms that you might need a better VOIP service to avoid being trapped with one that doesn’t perform properly or is too expensive!
Let’s just get started!
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On most days, you notice lost calls and poor quality
Communication is a crucial requirement for running a business. Every phone contact you make to a client or customer is critical to your success.
Consider the possibility that you lost a client simply because the VoIP network could not connect the call to you. It might be a significant loss for your company. You may also lose a customer if your VoIP has a high call drop rate.
So, if you’re experiencing frequent call dropouts, missed calls, or poor call quality, it’s time to choose a better VoIP service provider.
You frequently find yourself in a dead zone
It is frequently seen that communication networks fail catastrophically in some situations. Not because they lack infrastructure, but because they are not linked to the network’s master node. This is common in networks with out-of-date infrastructure.
Due to a lack of network updates, you may find yourself in a dead zone. This may be exacerbated if you are supposed to work from home (especially in this pandemic era). If you frequently find yourself in a dead zone, it is time to switch VoIP providers.
Increasing Rates
Call prices are one of the most critical variables to consider when selecting a service. In the end, it is the only aspect that most firms worry about. So, if you believe that the entire cost of your VoIP service is excessive, but the services supplied by the provider are inferior, you should begin seeking a better service provider.
However, before deciding on a service, be sure to compare the plans of other service providers and read the customer reviews.
Your staff is dissatisfied with the system
Cross-connections are a common issue in traditional calling systems. Some VoIP providers are now dealing with this issue, which might cause annoyance among your staff. One of the primary causes for this is a lack of sufficient bandwidth.
Aside from that, the frequent drop of calls may be highly annoying for those who work for you. This might have a direct influence on their performance. So, if you see a drop in your employees’ performance, you should investigate what’s causing it and, if necessary, change the VoIP service.
Customer complaints are on the rise
You will always receive consumer complaints, no matter what or how many enterprises you own. However, you must carefully examine them since they may be related to a lack of customer assistance rather than a lack of service quality.
If your customer service is unavailable, there might be a problem with your VoIP service. To save your client base, you must instantly move to a superior VoIP provider.
Concerns About Security
Every day, technology improves, and so do security systems. As a result, if you are utilizing VoIP services from a provider that has not enhanced his network security, you may need to change providers.
As cyberattacks become more common, it is critical to maintaining robust security processes to protect your sensitive data and communications.
Awful User Interface
It is common for VoIP service providers to place little emphasis on the user interface, whether on their phone or their application. This is one of the most critical factors influencing user experience. A well-designed user interface not only assists users in understanding what they are doing but directs them more effectively.
The modern VoIP providers feature engaging user interfaces, and it is for this reason that you should look for a better VoIP service.
In conclusion
You may believe that you have a lot to consider regarding your current VoIP service. Because we live in an age of highly secure and rapid technology, you must have a reliable oversight mechanism in place when a single erroneous phone call or email may derail everything. If you suspect that your VoIP system is generating problems, change to a better one.
VoIP(elaborated as Voice over Internet Protocol), is a technology that has been around for a while. You’re already familiar with VoIP technology if you’ve used a service like Skype or Google Voice. As the use and popularity of VoIP services grow, the business might be worth about $200 billion by the end of 2024. Most American families do not have a landline and rely on cellular phones and internet services to stay connected.
From a business standpoint, VoIP provides a cost-effective, contemporary alternative to the more traditional landline infrastructure. Furthermore, service providers frequently incorporate add-ons and interfaces that improve day-to-day operations in ways that landlines cannot.
Continue reading for additional information about the technology and step-by-step instruction on how to set up VoIP phone service.
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Understanding VoIP Systems and Their Operation
Simply put, VoIP is a communication technology that allows you to make and receive phone calls through a high-speed internet connection. Any smartphone can be used for this purpose. IP phones transform analog voice transmissions into digital signals that are subsequently sent over the internet.
Some VoIP systems may necessitate the use of Power-over-Ethernet (PoE), while others may not require the use of any hardware at all. This is since, by definition, VoIP can be used on virtually any internet-enabled device, including your tablet or laptop.
We can now go on to the step-by-step procedure of having your VoIP phone set up now that we’ve explained VoIP and what to do before acquiring service.
Step 1: Conduct Extensive Research Before Purchasing Your VoIP System
Before you set up a VoIP system, you need to verify the quality of your internet connection. You may test your internet speed or call your service provider to inquire about the quality and dependability of your location. The gadgets themselves may also influence the speed and reliability of your internet connectivity. Because VoIP necessitates consistent, high-quality internet, you must verify that your phone system can withstand the shift.
If You Want to Buy IP Phones or Other Hardware
VoIP system configurations can mimic traditional landlines, except that ethernet connections replace telephone wires. However, it is also feasible to utilize VoIP without using phones or purchasing phones, headsets, or other devices.
When looking for service, think about whether you’ll be connecting virtual numbers to current devices or if you’ll need to invest in additional gear. This response is generally determined by criteria such as your company’s size, location, and existing budget.
One unspoken issue of cloud phone service is that it is not always simple to call emergency services. In reality, the FCC mandates that linked VoIP telephone systems comply with enhanced 911 (E911) rules. This entails making the 911 service available as a fundamental feature to clients. They must also supply emergency responders with the 911 caller’s call back number and location.
It’s a good idea to understand how E911 will function through your selected VoIP service provider. You also need to ensure that the information you plan to offer is correct and updated as required.
Step 2: Determine the number of users and lines you will require.
If you’re a sole owner working from home, you’ll most likely just want one or two lines. But a corporation with hundreds or thousands of employees spread over dozens of departments and subdivisions has a new set of challenges.
Even in a large corporation, not everyone requires a phone line. You may just need one unique phone line per department, plus a few extra lines for top-level people. Your VoIP phone network configuration should be based on the amount of phone traffic your company anticipates. That is, even if there are reductions available, you should not purchase more phone lines than you require.
Step 3: Determine Service Fees and Add-On Fees
The monthly cost of VoIP will vary depending on how many lines you order. Of course, it’s customary for cloud phone service providers to offer a fixed amount if you purchase a particular number of phone lines. Assume you require 10 VoIP phone lines; a supplier may generally charge $50 per line but reduce the price to $10 per line if you acquire six to ten lines. Instead of $500 each month, you’d just be charged a $100 monthly fixed amount.
In addition to per-line charges, you may be charged every month for specific add-ons such as the usage of toll-free or foreign lines or CRM interfaces. Don’t forget to factor in installation and activation fees when budgeting for VoIP service.
Step 4: Look for a VoIP Phone Service Provider
When it comes to VoIP phone service, there is no shortage of possibilities. If you just need a virtual number for your business, you can acquire one for free via Google Voice. Signing up for Google Workspace also allows you to improve your Google phone service.
Google Workspace service plans:
Starter: $6 per user, per month
Standard: $12 per user, per month
Plus: $18 per user, per month
Enterprise: Contact for a quote
Other significant VoIP alternatives include:
Nextiva: Starting from $23.95 per user, per month (with <5 users)
VoIP Bible has produced a list of the finest VoIP services on the market. If you want to learn more about VoIP Phones, VoIP service providers, and which top businesses we suggest.
Following the Installation of VoIP Service
Once you’ve decided on and paid for VoIP service, there are a few things you might need to do now and then. Keep an eye out for prospective price adjustments, especially if you joined up at a discount that may expire after a few months or a couple of years.
Now that you know how to set up a VoIP phone system, you should also be aware that you are always free to switch to a new service if it offers better service choices at a lower cost.
Do you need an ideal IP desk phone? The Poly CCX 500 outperforms the competition with a 5-inch color touchscreen, beautiful Bluetooth® connection, and powerful Android 9 performance. Not to mention Polycom’s audio expertise, audio quality, and functionality. Order it with a handset or without a handset for a more contemporary look. You’re protected with the CCX 500 phone.
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Features of Poly CCX 500 Business Media IP Desk Phone Microsoft Teams Edition
Native Microsoft Teams experience
With a 5-inch multi-touch LCD display, color touchscreen control is possible.
With Poly HD Voice and Poly Acoustic Clarity, you can hear every nuance.
With Poly Acoustic Fence, you may get rid of annoying background noise.
Full-duplex speakerphone operation with superior echo cancellation
Chipsets with high performance to enable next-generation features
With the optional Wi-Fi dongle, it is simple to install anyplace.
There are headset choices to fit every taste.(Bluetooth®, USB, RJ9)
The most advanced sound technology for the cleanest calls. Poly HD voice (100-20kHz) and Poly Acoustic Clarity technology allow you to hear every nuance. Poly Acoustic Fence technology eliminates annoying background noise. And brace yourself for our cutting-edge noise-canceling technology.
Simple UI and design. Because of its complete availability, the CCX 500 turbocharges collaboration. Combine it with a stunning ergonomic design, an easy user touchscreen interface, and a dedicated Teams button (Microsoft Teams edition) or Application button (Open SIP), and you’re in for a significant productivity increase.
You have the choice of using a handset or a headset. With its integrated Bluetooth technology, 2 USB ports, RJ9 and EHS connections, and more headset options than ever before, you can travel hands-free. Never use a phone? Purchase your CCX 500 without one.
Improved management. Better understanding. Better assistance. It’s every IT manager’s fantasy. Setup is a breeze because of robust provisioning and control of telephone deployment and maintenance.
Physical Features Review of Poly CCX 500
Let’s take a look. Taking a look at some of the components that come with the CCX 500 desk phone. We’ve got the phone itself.
Poly CCX 500 comes with two physical types
Now one of the first things I want to call out about this phone is the form factor. you can purchase the CCX 500 in two different SKUs:
One includes the actual handset component.
The other is without the handset, just the speakerphone and the screen itself standing by itself without this whole left-hand portion or an actual handset.
So you can get it in either way. We’re looking at the handset model here. As we look at the device, we can see that the bottom section is all speakerphone (1), and Polly prides itself on its acoustics and audio experience. A substantial portion of the front-facing part of the device is the speakerphone itself. There is a mute on and off button (2) at the bottom, which lights up right at the bottom. Which is easy to access.
The device runs Android nine, and if we flip the phone around, we got a series of ports in here. First, you can see our handset port (1) itself on the right. And then, as we look in, we’ve got an optional power port (2). This device uses PoE at its network port (3) which connects just beside the power port, so you don’t need to plug in the AC adapter if you’ve got PoE capabilities. Otherwise, that is where you would plug in the optional power component. A Gigabit Ethernet cable connects straight to the PoE switch for Ethernet coming in and a headset jack (4) over on the far right there. You’ve also got your Kensington lock hold (5) there to make sure no devices go walking off. And two slots (6) where you can attach the desk stand or the kickstand to keep the phone standing up straight. Again that quote-unquote kickstand slide right into the back, and then that allows the phone to stand up at a particular angle. You can have the phone at a more elevated vertical stance if it’s plugged in. if you were to flip it around, you’ll let the phone kind of sit back a little bit more and relax a little more horizontally.
Side view of Poly CCX 500
There are also a couple of USB ports on the side of the device, regular USB and USB C ports. So, one of those depends on the type of device you might want to plug in. you can insert a headset in the back or connect a USB headset on the side. So that is the actual phone device, the compute portion itself.
And then finally we’ve got the headset itself, or the handset itself, I should say. And it is a handset you hold it to your ear, it plugs into the phone, and you talk into it and hear things from it. LOL (you know I can’t leave anything out while describing.)
Overview of Physical Configuration
To piece these all together is pretty straightforward. You need to prop the desk stand. So, just slides right into the back there. And then take the handset cable and just plug that in right underneath. After that, insert the RJ45 jack of the PoE cable in the back.
The device is all put together.
Let’s get Poly CCX 500 powered on and look at setting it up
We are powering the device on after having put together the CCX 500. super complex. Plugin the handset, Plug in the PoE cable at the back. And attach the little kickstand to the back so that the phone stands up. and once you’ve gone through that brain-busting process. (I’m sarcastic here. Super easy to do. and very quickly you plug the PoE cable in, and the device powers up)
The Poly CCX 500 goes through a couple of tiny screens during the bootup. The CCX 500 attempts to join the network via DHCP. And then, you’ll be presented with the Microsoft Teams sign-in screen. However, before you get there, you will get presented with a license agreement. If you are powering this up for the first time that you do need to accept.
Before you can actually get to sign in and all that good stuff when powering the device up for the first time. You do need to accept the License Agreement. You may scroll through and all of its glory all the way down to the end. A lot of words in here. And then you can accept it.
Then you need to choose the language. It defaults to English (United States). Now, you need to select the mode of the provisioning profile that you want to put it in. You’ll get Microsoft Teams and Skype for business. Keep Microsoft teams in place. We do want to continue to set this phone in Microsoft teams mode.
Congratulations! you launched Microsoft teams. Now you have the sign-in screen. You will also see that you’ve got June 1st up top. This might not be your time, but it defaults to GMT. Before you sign in, let’s go to settings with the little gear icon at the top right. Take a look at what you can do from the settings view. Make any changes you want to make. In the language option, you can see there are several options there. It goes way down. There’s a lot in here it defaulted to English (United States). Then your date and time may be correct for you as it is linked to Microsoft’s NTP server. But the time will be GMT by default. If GMT is not your time zone, you can go ahead and grab your time zone or the closest to your time zone if your time zone isn’t there. When you tap/press back, it’ll save your settings there. So when you go to go back, it says do you want to keep. You need to tap yes.
Under the headset, you can do hook switch mode Plantronics EHS or traditional way. Echo cancellation can be turned on as well. Up next, you’ll have Bluetooth. You can turn on Bluetooth and then attach or connect a headset or USB device to a USB Bluetooth device through here and then manage those devices. Then accessibility lots of good accessibility options. If you were to toggle accessibility ON, you have a high contrast mode, significant text color correction, and your correction mode. And then debug. These are the non-admin debug settings. In here, you can access logging, you can do a screen capture, and you can reboot your phone, just different ways to kind of do some troubleshooting and testing. If the end-user needing the call on to the help desk, maybe.
The about screen gives all of the firmware versions, the IP, your MAC address, the Teams version, all that good stuff you may need to provide to either the help desk agent or Polly if you’re calling in for support for some reason.
After that, you’ll have the admin-only option. You do have to enter a password there, and the default admin password for Poly CCX 500 is 456 if it hasn’t been changed. Enter that, and you’ll notice there are a few different options. Debug is one of them. This is an additional debug than the previous one.
You will get logging and screen capture utilities. But you’ll also get the reset custom config and reset to factory defaults. I’ll not suggest you do either of those, as there’s the web user interface to do that more easily. You probably want to turn on the Web User Interface.
But when you do that, it enables the webserver and reboots the phone. So you should do that right before you’re ready to log into Teams. Why do I recommend enabling Web User Interface? Because sometimes, it’s helpful to log into the device via IP address and look at the more advanced full-featured settings list from the web interface.
Click the sign-in button. You can sign into the Intune portal in a couple of different ways. You can either tap on the screen and bring up the on-screen keyboard and type it all in that way, and that’s all fine and good. But, I always prefer the sign from another device option. This brings up a URL that will go to where you can input OTP, and you can then sign on with an actual desktop or laptop keyboard. In my opinion, it is much easier than typing it down. They put a little smaller screens. And most of all, it will give you the option to save the device for infinite times (as long you don’t update your Microsoft’s Password). After you are signed into Microsoft Teams, you will see the customary starting screen that displays when you sign into teams and a new device. Tap got it, and then you’ll see the familiar Microsoft Teams interface for your devices.
You’ll get calls, a calendar, and voicemail, all at the bottom. Call history set up in there, all of your calendar items, your one-click join button for meetings. Go over to voicemail. You can see your voicemails that are in there and play them. As well as identifying who it was that called. Go back over to calls. You’ll see you’ve got the dial pad. When you click on the call button, you can either search for people by name within your org or click on the dial-pad itself and enter in a number to call. You’ll notice it starts on speakerphone if you don’t have the handset off. But if you pick the handset up, you no longer hear the speakerphone. And then if you hang that up, of course, it hangs up the call, and you don’t hear the dial tone at all. That’s where you can go to make a call. You’ll notice there’s a little button up at the top next to the search button. If you tap that, that is actually a parked call. If you have call parking enabled in your environment and Microsoft teams, then you’d be able to pick up a parked call on this device by tapping that button and inputting the code for the parked call. This is all our primary interface for calling. Calls, Calendar, voicemail, how to join meetings, all that good stuff.
You’ll notice up on the top left that you’ve got several options as well. You can set your status to be something else. You can select a status message, hot-desking, settings, etc.
If there are any other organizations that you are a guest in, you can join them below.
Click on settings. You’ll get the dark theme. And look at your profile. You’ll get calling rules and behaviors. You can configure call forwarding, which you can turn off. Choose where to forward to simultaneous ring. You can manage your voicemail right here as well. Your voicemail greeting, and then you can choose to block calls with no caller ID if this is allowed by policy.
Going back, you’ll also get about again. This gives all the information about the versions and all the good stuff there. You’ll have a company portal reporting an issue to actually submit a support issue there. You can sign out for this user, and if you need to access any of the device-specific settings, the Saltine stuff. But with device settings brings you back to that menu we discussed in the beginning. Here’s where you can manage all of the other local device settings from the machine.
For managing the Poly CCX 500, you need to go to the Microsoft teams admin Center. Go down to the devices section, then phones. You can only see phones and collaboration bars. Eventually, you’ll have the Microsoft Teams rooms in here as well. Go to phones. Look for the CCX 500, and looking at the models, you’ll see there’s a CCX 500 or Poly shows online. As soon as you signed into the phone and registered with Intune, it showed up in this admin portal. To manage, you’ll see the IP address there as well. If you click on the device, you’ll get many things to do with it and look at the details.
You can restart the device right up top or download the logs if you need them for support purposes. You can refresh the details if you feel like things have changed. And then you can see when it was last seen or what the name of the device is. If you look at the health of your device. You should see that everything is up to date. You could update your firmware if there was firmware to update. You just check it, and there will be an option to correct it. You can also see if your Teams app is updated and all the other apps and agents installed on it. So if we need to schedule or upgrade its firmware, that’s in the Details tab. Again you can get a bit more information if you need to add notes, and there could be notes at it. You’d get the serial number, the IP address if one was added in. The History tab will show the history of things you did. you can get a sense of where the device is at what’s been tried with it, and that’s it that’s where you come to manage a poly CCX 500 or any other Microsoft teams native phone device within the Microsoft teams Admin Center.
Pros and Cons of Poly CCX 500 Teams Edition
Pros and Cons of Poly CCX 500 Teams Edition
Pros
Bluetooth allows the phone to be linked with approved headsets, which is beneficial for individuals who prefer not to pick up a handset and use a headset. In addition, the radio connector on the back allows for the connection of a headset. I chose to wear my Dre Beats. Obviously, they are not Teams approved, but the audio was still PSTN quality!
Hot Desking is supported, which means that several users can sign in and stay logged in for a maximum of two hours before the phone reverts to the master login.
It’s convenient because Poly and Yealink Teams Phone come with a web server. Unfortunately, Audiocodes does not offer this on their C450HD, limiting phone and device setup control to the Teams Admin Centre only. Poly and Yealink, fortunately, provide administration solutions for Teams native phones, PDMS, and YMCS, respectively.
The CX500’s smaller form factor, compared to Audiocodes and Yealink equivalents, necessitates less desk space.
The CCX 500’s clean lines and beautiful design complement the aesthetics of a modern office.
Compared to some of the other Teams certified devices I’ve used, the 5-inch touch screen is sharp, simple to see, and surprisingly quick and responsive.
I appreciate how it includes physical buttons for the speakerphone, headset, mute, and volume and a “Teams” control that will be activated with a future software update.
Both the handset and the speakerphone are crisp and loud.
The presence of both a USB A and a USB C connection ensures current, and future compatibility for Teams approved headsets and peripherals.
Bluetooth is built-in, allowing you to connect Bluetooth headphones directly to your phone.
A USB dongle can be used to add Wi-Fi.
A red-light blinks on the top right to alert you to voicemails.
Cons
Despite being my favorite of all the Teams Phones, with a sleek, beautiful, and modern appearance, I find the UX and UI troublesome for a few reasons.
A lack of buttons might be an issue. Users that demand a hard phone are often the more complicated use cases. While an onscreen keyboard is not standard or widespread on smartphones, the screen is relatively tiny. I can see that this would not be a comfortable login experience for people with big fingers, given the user already needs to input their Azure UPN and password to log in. Adoption and acceptance may be difficult if users are opposed to using an onscreen keyboard, which Poly does not provide as a solution with physical keyboards outside of older SfB/3PIP phones.
I’m having trouble coming up with a broad use case for the handset-free variant. Given that it requires a headset to be linked with the phone, we may assume the user already has a laptop/PC, and if so, why would you want a handset-less phone, presumably in a hot-desking area? Poly should provide some specified personas and scenarios. However, the leap of faith they’ve made with these designs may be a concern for people who expect a phone to be simply a phone.
The CCX500 with a handset is not inexpensive. Despite being aimed at the general people, the phone costs around $300 and may require significant expenditure to deploy depending on the number of customers that require a phone.
There are no CCX models available that feature video.
I’m just guessing, but I don’t think there’s any Better Together or VDI support yet.
Poly CCX 500 Teams Edition Review
The CCX 500 is somehow a mid-range VoIP phone featuring a five-inch color touchscreen, similar to the CCX 400. However, unlike the CCX 400, this gadget has a more powerful chipset, which means that next-generation technologies such as NoiseBlock AI are incorporated. This phone also has Bluetooth capability and two USB ports (one Type-A, one Type C). A dedicated Microsoft Teams button is another noticeable feature of the CCX 500. As a result of the Corona (COVID-19) pandemic, businesses have been compelled to offer remote working, and Microsoft Teams’ user base has skyrocketed. Because this phone and others in the CCX series are designed for this specific video collaboration platform. They are a logical choice for organizations that often utilize Teams to hold remote meetings. Organizations that use other digital technologies, such as Zoom or Google Meet, may wish to investigate other VoIP phones. Poly HD Voice and Poly Acoustic Clarity are featured, providing the same excellent audio quality that users expect from the last Poly phones. A red LED light blinks on and off to alert users when they receive voicemails, and there are physical buttons to engage the loudspeaker, add a headset, mute the phone, and regulate the ringing level. Compared to the CCX 400, the extra capabilities will likely be welcomed by enterprises that manage significantly more significant call volumes. The device has the same outstanding sound quality.
Call Quality
Video Quality
Support
Connectivity
Integration
Features Availability
Ease of Use
Value for money (ROI)
Summary
The CCX 500’s clean lines and beautiful design complement the aesthetics of a modern office. Compared to some of the other Teams certified devices I’ve used, the 5-inch touch screen is sharp, simple to see, and surprisingly quick and responsive. I appreciate how it includes physical buttons for the speakerphone, headset, mute, and volume and a “Teams” control that will be activated with a future software update. Both the handset and the speakerphone are crisp and loud. The presence of both a USB A and a USB C connection ensures current, and future compatibility for Teams approved headsets and peripherals. Bluetooth is built-in, allowing you to connect Bluetooth headphones directly to your phone. A USB dongle can be used to add Wi-Fi. A red LED light blinks on the top right to alert you to voicemails.
Early in 2020, Microsoft added Microsoft 365 Business Voice to its popular Microsoft Teams platform. Microsoft 365 or Microsoft 365 Business, formerly known as Office 365, offers this voice-over IP (VoIP) add-on. Some may dismiss it as a stripped-down VoIP add-on for Teams, but we found its functionality and Microsoft’s integration efforts to be great, particularly with Teams, but also with the rest of Microsoft 365. Most of what holds this product behind our VoIP Bible‘s Telecommunication Engineers’ Choice winners in the VoIP category, including offerings like RingCentral Office and Intermedia Unite, is some onerous configuration choices and a cap on both calling plans and users.
As many organizations convert from Private Branch Exchange (PBX) to Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP), it can be a daunting task to migrate an entire company’s telephony system. Having a solid phone infrastructure in place if your company relies on receiving inbound customer calls or sustaining team communication across multiple locations. We go over the functionality and features of Microsoft’s IP telephony solution in our Microsoft Teams review to determine if it’s one of the best VoIP services for your business.
This product has all of the capabilities you’d expect from a small business VoIP solution, such as auto-attendants, call queues, and group calling, as well as extensive interaction with Microsoft’s ecosystem. However, Teams must serve as the entry point for that integration. This isn’t too strict of a requirement because Microsoft Teams has progressively earned its way into the crucial productivity app category for many firms, especially those dealing with significant numbers of work-from-home employees during the epidemic. When calculating the overall cost of the solution for your organization, both Teams and Microsoft 365 will be considered.
Contents
Plans and price for the Microsoft Teams Phone System
Your company must have one of the three Office 365 enterprise plans to use Microsoft Teams as a phone system (named E1, E3, and E5).
Businesses will need to purchase extra licenses to utilize Teams as a phone system at $8/month per user with E1 ($8/month per user) and E3 ($20/month per user). The E5 plan, on the other hand, includes everything at $35 per month per user.
As an add-on to Teams, you may expect it to focus mainly on software focusing on mobile, but Microsoft went to great lengths to ensure that this platform could also be used in a traditional office setting. The company presented us with a Yealink MP56, a ubiquitous VoIP-compatible desktop phone, to demonstrate its point. While SIP compatibility and Microsoft Teams certification were both unique to this desktop phone, Microsoft maintains a list of Teams-certified devices on its website, emphasizing its importance in ensuring the optimal experience.
This means, in addition to paying for specific hardware (if that’s a need), you’ll also need to pay for a Microsoft 365 subscription. The company offers a variety of plans, starting at $5 a month per user. That’s for Microsoft 365 Business Basic. Which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint web and mobile editions. Microsoft 365 Business Voice is now available for a single $20 price added to any Microsoft 365 account, but two significant drawbacks are. First, there’s the monthly minute limit, which is set at 3,000. That adds out to 50 hours per month, which may seem like a lot, but in voice-intensive professions like custody, it can quickly add up.
This means it won’t compete with enterprise-focused services like VoIP Bible’s Choice winner RingCentral or Vonage Business Cloud but instead focuses on SMB-focused offerings like Intermedia Unite or 8×8’s X Series. Microsoft 365 Business Voice doesn’t compare well to these SMB-focused competitors in terms of price per feature, but it’s not horrible. However, for firms already familiar with Microsoft Teams, its low cost and ease of use will make it a very appealing option, especially now that its capabilities have been increased.
Businesses will also need to pay an extra fee for direct routing through a third party or purchase call plans from Microsoft in addition to these plans.
A domestic calling plan with 3000 domestic minutes costs $12 per user per month. Meanwhile, a 3000 domestic minutes and 600 international minutes domestic and international calling plan costs $24 per month per user. Each user must have their own call plan, though unused minutes can be pooled if coworkers have different usage levels.
If your company has many meeting rooms with conference phones, each of these will require a $15/month license.
Plans and price for the Microsoft 365 Teams Phone System
Portfolio of Microsoft Voice (Microsoft Teams Phone System)
Microsoft has made multiple announcements and releases between 2020 and 2021 to improve Teams and its VoIP, video conferencing, and collaboration technologies. So it’s worth explaining where Microsoft 365 Business Voice comes in, especially since Microsoft Azure also touts Azure Communications Services (ACS), which provides many of the same voice capabilities as Teams with Microsoft 365 Business Voice. Of course, there are still some Skype for Business instances floating around, despite Microsoft’s announcement that Teams will soon replace Skype for business users.
The short explanation for Microsoft 365 Business Voice vs. ACS is that Business Voice is a user-facing application that provides voice capability to Microsoft Teams subscribers. In contrast, ACS is a set of Azure voice and collaboration services aimed at application developers who have standardized the Azure stack and want to integrate those technologies into their apps. ACS is primarily aimed at a help desk and similar menu-driven speech applications, despite being based on some of the same Microsoft core technologies. That implies it’s geared toward developers working on communication scenarios such as app-to-app, browser-to-app, and browser-to-browser. It also works with Azure Bot Service, which is the company’s intelligent chatbot service. As a result, a typical ACS app for service desks or sales departments might be an intelligent IVR or chat experience.
On the other hand, Business Voice is a set of user-facing VoIP features that are fully integrated into Microsoft Teams, effectively converting Teams into a cloud PBX for small businesses. However, through its Teams Displays, Microsoft is expanding Business Voice’s capabilities in a different path than some of the other participants in this roundup, especially now that Teams has added support for a SIP gateway.
Microsoft said in early 2021 that the Microsoft Teams public preview would include a complete SIP gateway. Straight telephony capabilities such as call transfer, device-based do not disturb, and inbound and outbound calls over SIP-compliant hardware, such as desk handsets, would become more manageable. Microsoft mentioned certain handsets that would support its gateway at the launch, including Cisco IP phones with a multi-platform software, Polycom’s CCX series, and Yealink’s T20-T50 series. The adoption of SIP will also help Microsoft Teams displays improve their capabilities.
Lenovo ThinksSmart View is one of Lenovo’s Team Displays, smart speakers designed exclusively for Microsoft Teams and intended for business PCs. They’re essentially speakerphones with a full-color touch display that can be used for voice and video calling and virtual meetings. They also feature voice control for Cortana, so users can ask inquiries like, “Cortana, what is the weather forecast for today?”
Microsoft 365 Business VoIP, on the other hand, is designed solely to provide voice capabilities to Teams users via the Teams app interface, which is what we’ve tried here. Once it’s out of the Public Preview, the Microsoft SIP gateway will expand Business Voice to a growing list of suitable gear, allowing Teams to compete more effectively with full-fledged cloud PBXes. However, we could not test the preview version with the SIP gateway because it was unavailable at the time of this evaluation.
User Interface of the Microsoft Teams Phone System
The Microsoft Teams UI is available on all platforms and is exceptionally simple to use, especially for companies who already use Teams as their primary collaboration tool.
Some planning is necessary for people who are new to Teams to ensure that they get off to a good start. Before installing, conduct a thorough audit of your company’s personnel and the various departments, roles, and teams. This will make setting up user groups much more straightforward. An administrator, for example, can set up a telephone hunter group to call all sales lines if a sales agent’s phone isn’t picked up after a given number of rings by grouping individual sales personnel into a group.
While Microsoft Teams has apps for iOS and Android, there is no obligation for users to download the Microsoft Teams app if call forwarding is set on the system.
The system takes advantage of Microsoft’s Global Delivery Network, allowing it to be deployed to businesses of any size and scaled up with minimal downtime. Furthermore, because Microsoft upgrades its features regularly, users will always access the most recent version and releases at no additional cost.
User Experience using Microsoft Teams
Despite the lack of SIP support, Microsoft 365 Business Voice benefits significantly from its Teams collaboration. Teams have attracted a lot of attention recently due to several firms allowing work-from-home settings during the pandemic. Many firms’ inter-office communications backbone has become Teams and comparable platforms like Slack, so using that foundation for voice makes far more sense than when everyone worked in a centralized office area.
It’s a no-brainer for existing Teams users to add the Microsoft 365 Business Voice option. If you’ve used Teams for any length of time, it just feels natural. However, Microsoft Teams might still support several VoIP handsets and hardware devices without SIP, with fewer functionalities. We tested it using the Yealink UH36 USB Wired Headset and found it more than sufficient. Even on a non-segmented network, calls made through Teams with this headset remained crisp and clear.
Having immediate access to your contact list from Microsoft Outlook promotes convenience and efficiency when interacting with someone outside your company. A call or Teams conference may be started with only one click. You have a variety of communication choices for connections within your firm. If you only need to send a quick chat message to a coworker, the presence indication saves you time.
From your phone or tablet, the Microsoft Teams mobile client accomplishes everything the desktop client does. We put teams through their paces on an Android phone and an iPad Pro running Apple’s iOS. Both experiences were well-designed for these operating systems, and while they didn’t have all of the features of the desktop client, they delivered what you’d expect from a mobile platform in a consistent manner across operating systems. The key here is to carry on with your work communications on a personal device, which Microsoft 365 Business Voice makes feasible.
System Administration for Microsoft 365 Business Voice
The admin.teams.microsoft.com website handles all administrative tasks. You can access all of the features administrators need from the administration page, including control over who may access specific features, reporting, and user management. These capabilities also don’t have to be controlled on a per-user basis. Administrators may manage security features and user access through policies targeted at specific user groups, thanks to Microsoft’s Active Directory experience. They can be structured around nearly anything, including job title, geographic area, and even device kind. Policies can also be used to offer control over meeting rooms, live events, and conference bridges.
Answering a series of questions to determine the default actions for each function is the first step in creating a call attendant. This includes determining how each call will be answered and managed by prescribing a call flow. This could be as simple as playing a music file or sending a specific message. It also covers creating a menu of options that allows the caller to assist in routing their call to the appropriate resource. Unfortunately, setting business hours is considerably more time-consuming than most of the other programs we looked at, particularly ones that stress ease of use, such as Freshcaller. This is because you must set the start and end hours for each day of the week separately.
The usual call use and call quality data you need to measure the functioning of a VoIP system are included in reporting capabilities. The Call Quality Dashboard is a separate section of the Teams administrative function that provides basic default reports and builds custom reports. The Microsoft Call Quality Connector provides links to Microsoft’s Power BI platform, allowing you to go deeper into your organization’s speech data metrics than most other solutions in this review.
Key Features of the Microsoft Teams Phone System
Call queues, call forwarding, voicemail, transferring, auto attendants that may be customized for office hours, out-of-office hours, and holidays, call parking, call blocking, group call pickups and call delegation are all available through the Microsoft Teams Phone System.
Presence is a key component of Microsoft Teams. Presence displays a user’s current availability in real-time, providing a quick visual indicator before parking or transferring calls to colleagues.
Functionality for sophisticated calling needs, such as those required by a call center, is one capability that the system lacks. More sophisticated hunting groups or ring settings than the three default call distribution options are not possible.
There is no built-in call recording feature, and while there are workarounds, there are currently no third-party apps that can do it.
There is presently no interface between the phone system and any CRM platforms for firms that employ a customer relationship management system (CRM). This implies that no platform, even Microsoft’s own CRM software, Dynamics, can automatically log incoming or exiting calls.
While Microsoft 365 has reporting capabilities, it primarily focuses on call quality and allows organizations to address any difficulties with the system’s devices. Many granular statistics used as critical performance indicators, such as ring times, are not accessible to users.
Other Features of the Microsoft Teams Phone System
Microsoft Teams offers a vast range of applications that interface with it, as you might anticipate. While most of them are not yet voice-related, this will change as more developers build third-party apps around ACS.
When looking at different VoIP providers, you’ll notice that most have some Microsoft 365 connectivity. That puts some pressure on Microsoft to ensure that its solution integrates and is possible with its product, and it appears that the corporation has worked hard to achieve that goal. Teams entirely support other Atlassian and Salesforce products. They also offer tools for evaluating specific types of voice workloads and making recommendations for deployment and implementation.
Support for Microsoft Teams Phone System
The Microsoft 365 website includes a comprehensive support section with videos, blogs, and papers to assist users in getting the most out of the platform.
Microsoft does not provide live assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A ticket must be created for any issues that arise, and contact times can take up to a few hours. The assistance quality varies, with some problems being answered fast and others requiring many requests to be resolved.
Security of the Microsoft Teams Phone System
Additional security tools, such as Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics, are standard with the E3 and E5 plans. Advanced security, compliance, and analytical capabilities are all part of this package.
Microsoft encrypts all data in its possession, both at rest and in transit, and all audio and video delivered through Teams are delivered using SRTP.
Following the discovery of several vulnerabilities in Microsoft Teams in 2020, questions about its security have been raised. Furthermore, Microsoft security can be complicated, as some businesses require multiple licenses and add-ons to achieve compliance.
But It’s Not for Everyone
All of this is to say that Microsoft 365 Business Voice is not a solution for everyone. This first version of the solution primarily targets general-purpose VoIP for smaller businesses already invested in Microsoft Teams. This solution is ideal for those businesses and is a no-brainer to adopt.
Companies searching for a sales or support-oriented solution with features like call parking, large-scale operator management, or similar call center-style capabilities will have to find workarounds because sophisticated versions of these functions aren’t yet included in the solution. While the planned SIP gateway and the availability of more third-party ACS apps may change this in the future, Business Voice is unlikely to be considered for large-scale VoIP deployments.
On the plus side, Microsoft has done an excellent job integrating teams and Business Voice with the rest of its services. It has access to the extended family of Microsoft productivity technologies, including Power BI and the various Microsoft development environments, particularly ACS, in addition to the core programs of Microsoft 365, such as Outlook and Word. That means you’ll have many more options and tools with your own customized instance of Microsoft 365 Business Voice than you will with most VoIP competitors.
This platform offers excellent customization capabilities over a full, general-purpose VoIP service that’s easy to adopt out of the box if you’re ready to put in some substantial effort. If you’re not willing to put in the effort, there’s a good chance a Microsoft partner will, or that what you’re looking for is already available as a value-add product. However, if you’re seeking a large-scale communications solution that you can use right away, Microsoft 365 Business Voice isn’t the solution for you.
Pros & Cons of Microsoft 365 Business Voice
Pros & Cons of Microsoft 365 Business Voice
Pros
Mobility – All you need is an internet connection to access your phone system from anywhere on any device.
It’s less expensive than a standard VoIP phone service – A VoIP phone system typically costs between $25 and $40 per month per user.
Integrate seamlessly with the communication and collaboration platforms you already use daily – With entire history and continuity, as well as easy on-screen management and control, move from an instant messaging chat to a voice call to a video conference.
The convenience of the cloud – There’s no need to manage a phone system, and there’s no need to be tied to a specific site, office, or location.
There’s no need to manage or license any additional software – Business Voice is a subscription-based add-on to your Microsoft 365 membership.
Device flexibility – You can use practically any computer headset, camera, microphone, and speaker set you desire, or you can use Microsoft Teams-compatible telephone desk sets that work exactly like a typical high-feature desktop phone.
Cons
The quality of service is determined by internet connection – The quality of your calls, as with all VoIP phone options, is defined by your internet connection. You’ll almost certainly get lousy service if you try to work somewhere with low internet connectivity.
Designed for everyday use – As previously stated, if your company has specific or sophisticated phone demands, Business Voice may not be the best answer.
User capacity is limited – Business Voice’s plans are limited to 300 users, making it unsuitable for larger enterprises.
Competitions of the Microsoft Teams Phone System
Numerous cloud-based VoIP systems are worthy of consideration as alternatives to Microsoft Teams Phone System. RingCentral Office is the exact pricing per user as Zendesk and Salesforce. Still, it includes more call center features, like automatic call recording, CRM connectivity for key platforms like Zendesk and Salesforce, and live help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It also can work with Microsoft Teams.
The Bottom Line
The ease of transitioning from Microsoft Teams to the VoIP option is a massive bonus for those who already use it. It’s also great for organizations wishing to scale up in the future, as extra user licenses can be purchased in a matter of minutes.
However, the system has limitations and is not suitable for organizations that require more complex phone arrangements. Furthermore, if your company uses many phones, the expense of obtaining licenses and call plans can soon add up. Microsoft’s lack of 24/7 assistance is also a worry when it comes to troubleshooting and potential downtime. Businesses that require system assistance 24 hours a day, seven days a week, can do so through a third-party provider.
Microsoft 365 Business Voice is a no-brainer method to provide powerful SMB VoIP capability across both desktop and mobile devices for firms with roughly 300 employees and a concentration on Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft 365 Business Voice Review
Microsoft 365 Business Voice brings cloud-based telephony to Teams, bringing your company’s communication and collaboration needs together in one place. Business Voice allows you to make calls from any device – computer, phone, tablet, and so on – to anyone, anywhere. Business Voice is housed on Microsoft’s secure cloud, so you can count on consistent service and high audio quality. Microsoft 365 Business Voice is available as an optional add-on plan or as an incorporated feature with certain bundles. When you sign up for a Microsoft voice service, Microsoft takes over as your phone system, phone line provider, and long-distance provider, reducing or eliminating the need for other auxiliary systems, complications, and expenses.
Call quality
Ease of use
Features
Customer support
Value for money (ROI)
Summary
On paper, Microsoft Teams appears to have everything a business might want in a team collaboration tool. In truth, using it isn’t that pleasant, and it might be much better. Microsoft Teams enables your team (or multiple teams) to collaborate on a single platform. You may speak with anyone in real-time. The chat part is well-designed, and you may personalize your messages just as in an email. You can also upload and exchange files with others. You have a calendar that functions similarly to Google Calendar. However, if you use Outlook for email, it’s the most incredible tool for creating events and meetings. You can have one or more individuals on a team call. It performs admirably, with all of the features you’d expect from a video conferencing program. Overall, if your firm uses Microsoft Office extensively, Microsoft Teams is the natural add-on solution for team collaboration, cohesion, and productivity. The primary issue with the interface is that it is not very smooth and might be confusing at times. It’s almost as though there’s too much going on. Also perplexing is the file-sharing portion. It’s pretty similar to how PC files are stored, and it appears to be counterproductive in this case. It’s not as convenient if you’re not used to working with Microsoft Office. The platform seems to consume significant bandwidth and CPU, resulting in a delayed collaborative experience. Overall, Teams could be made a lot easier to use by removing all extraneous features and making the platform much more straightforward.
Virtual phone numbers in the United States are a great way to get a toll-free phone number without paying for one. With this service, you get a free and reliable phone number, and it’s free!
Virtual phone numbers can be obtained by contacting any providers that offer them. Before you get your virtual number, you need to provide some basic information about yourself, such as your name, address, and Social Security Number.
Contents
Why would I need a virtual phone number?
One of the significant benefits of having a virtual phone number is setting it up to redirect to any phone number. This means that you can have your virtual number redirect to your office, home, spouse’s cellphone, and so on.
Virtual numbers also allow for remote work and make it possible for people in different time zones to join conference calls or meetings. Moreover, those can be used for business purposes like setting up a call center or an appointment system.
A virtual phone number is a temporary phone number that allows people to receive calls on their phone and send them back to their primary landline or cell phones. If you have a virtual phone system (VoIP Service), a business phone system or a PBX, you can then use this virtual phone number as a SIP trunk. And integrate it with your phone system. This way, all your incoming calls can be forwarded to any of the extensions or IVR of your phone system you want. In this way, all of your business phone system users can use the same number and call outside of your business. This can be very helpful for you and your business, especially if you are running a small or medium call center
What is a Virtual Number and what Benefits do they provide to You and Your Customers?
Virtual numbers provide a number that is local to you but not tied to any physical location. Those can be used for business purposes. For instance, they are sometimes given to customers who don’t live near the store or cannot come in person.
These numbers are also suitable for businesses who want to have an office in the US but are located elsewhere. Virtual numbers allow people living in other countries to set up a professional American business number without having an office there.
Which Company Offers Free Virtual Numbers in the US?
When you need a toll-free virtual number in the US, you can find some great offers. But for pure free numbers, you only have two options:
Sonetel – Get a genuinely free virtual phone number, not only in the US but also in other countries
Sonetel – Get a genuinely free virtual phone number, not only the US but also in other countries
Sonetel now is giving away 1,000,000 phone numbers worldwide for free.
Anyone who utilizes Sonetel’s free customer chat service on their website may receive a free phone number and answer calls for free from anywhere.
Yes, it is genuinely free.
They will not charge you any setup or monthly membership fees. With their free mobile applications, you can answer incoming calls, which will not charge you any setup or monthly membership fees. With their new free mobile applications, you can answer incoming calls from anywhere on the Internet. If you want to have calls redirected to your mobile number, you will only be charged local call rates. When consumers contact you, you may add a voice response to the number (“For sales press 1,” for example) to make it appear more professional. This is also completely free.
How to get your free phone number from Sonetel?
To get your free phone number, follow the instructions below.
Sign Up for Free: Sign up here using the Try for freebutton.
Go to Phone number settings: Go to Settings -> Phone numbers.
Select your number: Click on the +button and select a country and number of choices.
Select Free for website: Select the subscription type“Free for website” and then check out (no charge will be applied).
Done.
Sonetel Features Highlight
Free forever: If you also use our chat service on your company’s website, the number is free (excluding all forwarding).
Free call recording: You can record all your incoming and outgoing calls.
Fewer chargebacks: If a consumer can’t readily reach you when they have a problem, there’s a good chance they’ll submit a chargeback with their bank. Chargebacks are reduced when you use local phone numbers.
Global call forwarding: Any incoming calls to your phone numbers may be routed to anywhere in the globe for the price of a local call. Answer the phone with your ordinary mobile phone or any other sort of phone.
Voice response: Voice response and voicemail are simple to set up. There are prerecorded messages available in a variety of languages. You may easily record your own messages using any phone.
Call from your international numbers: You can call your phone numbers from anywhere in the globe using your ordinary mobile phone. This is not feasible with free phone numbers.
A professional front end for your company that is ready to use right now: Display your phone numbers from all around the world on your website. Answer phone calls using voice response (“For sales, push 1…”).
Pros and Cons of Sonetel
Pros
Free Version of Sonetel is available
Rarely ever have to refill business accounts’ minutes.
Call recording is FREE
Cons
No Free Trial on paid plans
Support isn’t that great, it’s hard to get into contact with somebody over there
Rating after using Sonetel
VoIP Bible
Call Quality
Number Portability
Number Availability
App Experience
Desktop User Experience
Features
Pricing
Summary
The Sonetel platform looks clean and easy to use. It has introductory tutorials and, in terms of cost, it is very affordable, and it also has a free plan to try one of its numbers at no charge. The chat plugin sometimes has issues, and in some cases, it may have inconveniences connecting to the websites. Another problem is that they do not have a live chat to resolve issues when needed. The transition from another service to Jive was straightforward. Activation of all phones took seconds to complete. The integration was fascinating, and the system itself is very intuitive. You can always try new alternatives for your business. Switching to Sonetel is easy. You can activate multiple phone numbers in seconds. The platform is very intuitive and has tutorials to learn to use it quickly and efficiently. What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized? Our call team can be heard clearly, quickly and easily; we use the platform to create work teams and divide the work into multiple interest groups. Our business has excellent phone support using Sonetel.
4.7
PhoneBurner – Free Trial US virtual phone number for Call Centers with the option to integrate CRMs
PhoneBurner – Free US Virtual Phone Number For Call Centers With The Option To Integrate CRMs
PhoneBurner is a VoIP dialer software that enables you to make sound business sales. It offers quality conversions and closed deals. This tool can be integrated with a lot of tools like Salesforce, Zapier, Zoho, etc. It allows you to dial from any mobile phone without any hassle.
PhoneBurner is also an outbound call center solution, allowing users to log in from their computer and make calls from the associated phone utilizing imported or admin-provided lead lists. Power calling, lead management, email follow-up, performance management, and analytics are among the features provided by the system.
The solution is accessible on a monthly subscription basis and offers phone and email customer assistance.
The PhoneBurner system complies with the TCPA/FCC. Users may keep extensive contact data in the integrated CRM or link with Salesforce and other major CRM apps. Voicemail drop, one-touch emails, email tracking, custom dispositions, call recording, call transfer, local ID tracking, and the LeadStream intelligent lead distribution system are also available.
PhoneBurner can expand to any size team and is administered from a single central admin site. Analytics and reporting tools provide real-time insight into ongoing operations and call performance. The platform is cloud-based, so no installs, setup costs or commitments are required.
How to get your free phone number from PhoneBurner?
Fillup the form and click on Request a Free Trial > Button.
You will get an email in 6 hours.
Activate using the link provided into the email.
You will get another email to actiavate your free US virtual number package.
After activating your free trial you will get the option to choose your number.
You can use that free US virtual number forever for incoming.
PhoneBurner feature Highlights
Power Dialing: PhoneBurner relieves sales representatives and other contact center workers of tedious and repeated chores. By eliminating manual dialing, agents may reach up to 80 contacts each hour. The power dialer function in PhoneBurner offers agents total control over the whole call experience.
Track Contact Activity: PhoneBurner’s sophisticated activity tracking capabilities take lead tracking to the next level. Agents may examine the Contact Activity page to see which outgoing emails have been opened, which links have been visited, and which attachments have been accessed. Agents may also keep track of how many times their videos have been seen.
Managing Contacts: An easy-to-use CRM allows PhoneBurner users to track leads, take notes, and schedule follow-ups online. Agents should be able to build custom layouts, categories, and searches in the contact manager. They may also sort data fields and tags and previous check searches to ensure they obtain the most accurate results every time.
Team Reporting: PhoneBurner’s team activity reports may be used by sales teams and other professional organizations. Managers should sift through call session records to find hidden information about their best and poorest performing agents.
Pros and Cons of PhoneBurner
Pros
Automates calling, sending emails, and leaving voicemails.
Easily manage user base
Cons
Does not have any sales analytics or revenue projections.
There is a little room for improvement on report around time-based reporting for larger scale businesses that utilize the platform.
Rating after using PhoneBurner
VoIP Bible
Call Quality
Number Portability
Number Availability
App Experience
Desktop User Experience
Features
Pricing
Summary
Excellent CRM for Increasing Calls, Emails, and Voicemails This firm and its customer service have been beyond my expectations. They performed an excellent job of getting us up and running, and they continue to offer prompt and efficient customer support. Extremely simple to use. Offers Free US Virtual Number, Calls, emails, and voicemails are entirely automated. PhoneBurner allows you to make 2-4 times as many calls, emails, and voicemails as you could without it. It’s the quickest approach to reach out to consumers and potential prospects. You may easily configure the program to create the sales process you wish to use and make adjustments at any moment. It’s fantastic! It lacks sales statistics and revenue predictions. You may combine it with another CRM to get the best of both worlds (the fastest possible calls, emails, and voicemails with PhoneBurner and sales analytics and pipeline management with an attached CRM). PhoneBurner was the only power dialer I found that could assist our staff make more calls, emails, and voicemails.
4.1
RingCentral – Not 100% Free Virtual Phone Number, But worth every penny
RingCentral – Not 100% Free Virtual Phone Number, But worth every penny
RingCentral is a cloud-based VoIP solution. Ringcentral offers different types of services related to unified communications. You can buy a whole system or some customized products from RingCentral, such as virtual private numbers, Unlimited calls to the US and Canada or even a complete Call center solution. But let me inform you first, RingCentral doesn’t provide 100% virtual private numbers with its package.
You can get a virtual private number eventually, and that is free. There is a way you can get the virtual private number from RingCentral for free. For this, you need to sign up for their RingCentral Office free trial. Once you get the trial, you will get a free Virtual number that you can use to make unlimited calls to the US and Canada.
The benefit of using RingCentral is it offers various types of service integration such as Salesforce, ServiceNow zendesk and box. RingCentral has four paid plans and works for almost all sizes of Companies. Whether you are a small company or a big large organization, RingCentral will work for you. The good thing is you can use a free trial of RingCentral office, and if you are not satisfied, you can stop using it.
How to get your free phone number from RingCentral?
First of all, let’s clarify, you are not getting a 100% free virtual phone number from RingCentral. But with the trial, you will be able to get it free for 15 days. And if you buy the RingCentral Office afterward starting the free trial, you will keep the free virtual number for yourself.
Sign up for the free trial using the email you received.
Select your options.
You will get an activation email.
RingCentral Office feature Highlights
Call Control: To be successful, every UCaaS system must have the proper call control. RingCentral, as a communication specialist, has no issue providing a comprehensive calling control environment, which company executives may access via a simple admin site.
Mobility: Mobility is quickly becoming a must-have feature for UCaaS. The pandemic of 2020 compelled several businesses to begin moving their operations to the cloud. RingCentral, fortunately, already has a significant presence in the cloud environment. Though the RingCentral cloud phone service provides hardware, accessories, and devices, it also assures that employees can stay productive no matter where they are.
Easy Administration: RingCentral, as a cloud-based communication vendor, makes it simple for organizations to access the technology they need for UC wherever they are, without the need for sophisticated configuration. With cloud technology, you may transform your office phone system and link your calling software with critical programs such as support ticket software or CRMs.
Monitoring: Monitoring is critical for ensuring that customers have a positive experience. RingCentral Office’s call monitoring capability allows supervisors to listen in on calls and give coaching and help. You may set up automatic call recording and call records for compliance or just to improve corporate decision making.
Global Office: RingCentral Office’s “Global Office” component is a must-have for organizations that are expanding at an astounding rate all over the world. RingCentral offers broad service in over 40 countries, as well as virtual numbers in over 100 countries. By linking your employees to the cloud, you can simplify the management of your whole phone system throughout the world.
RingCentral Meetings: Today, it appears that you can’t have a complete UCaaS solution without also investing in meetings and collaboration tools. As the workplace grows more scattered, RingCentral guarantees that employees can stay connected by providing HD-quality meetings via video, audio, and web apps.
Messaging for Team Collaboration: RingCentral connects teams together with RingCentral Glip, which opens the door to a variety of beneficial collaboration tools, further boosting the effectiveness of the hybrid workforce. You may avoid the hassles of complicated email threads by integrating instant messaging features into the communication system your team already uses.
Security: Controlling how users access and utilize your communication technology minimizes the danger of frequent data breaches and errors.
Reliability: Companies cannot compete in customer service if they are unable to sustain high-quality calls and interactions. Unfortunately, outages do occur, which is why it is critical to select a reputable source. RingCentral’s 17 data centres spread across four regions also means that you can experience enterprise-grade service for complete peace of mind.
Analytics and Reports: Analytics is at the heart of sound business decisions. RingCentral Office includes access to a full analytics suite, allowing you to create your own dashboards with over 30 pre-built KPI tracking tools and construct QoS reports for troubleshooting.
Pros and Cons of RingCentral
Pros
Call handling capabilities that are versatile and sophisticated.
A large variety of integrations are available.
Domestic US calls and messages are free.
International numbers from 55 different nations.
15-day risk-free trial period.
Cons
The learning curve is steep.
The Android app is occasionally unresponsive.
Rating after using RingCentral
VoIP Bible
Call Quality
Number Portability
Number Availability
App Experience
Desktop User Experience
Features
Pricing
Summary
RingCentral has provided a very significant overall experience. The sales and installation processes went smoothly. Users soon became used to RingCentral and were thrilled about a new communication method. RingCentral will meet our company’s future demands. By utilizing RingCentral, we can now minimize the number of contracts, homegrown systems, other vendors’ systems, and unsupported systems favoring cloud-based telephony. RingCentral has delighted both myself and my employer. RingCentral is a solution for unified communication. All forms of communication are kept in a single piece of software. It’s a good idea to provide a business partner with your office phone number, which they may call, text, or fax. Video conferencing is simple. RingCentral may be accessed via a web browser, desktop app, tablet app, or phone app. Consolidating all of these communications in one location makes it easier for business partners and customers to collaborate with us. RingCentral’s video conferencing software and business chat system may be improved. Zoom’s video conferencing quality is superior. The company chat system is excellent. However, it is not as fluid and beautiful as Slack. Those are two areas that could be improved.
4.5
CallHippo – Our Favorite Phone System, which provides Virtual Phone Numbers for more than 50 countries
CallHippo – Our Favorite Phone System, which provides Virtual Phone Numbers for more than 50 countries
The VoIP sector is entirely new to CallHippo. Call Hippo was founded in 2016 and may be purchased instantly from more than 50 nations worldwide. The registration procedure and the system interface are so easy to use that you may set up a contact center in only a few minutes.
CallHippo ensures that tiny start-ups, massive enterprises, and everything in between can only charge the service and provide very cheap fees. In addition, you may test out the CallHippo free plan where you just pay for a call and nothing more if you are an entrepreneur who starts your own business. Instead, the sales support staff may create a bespoke package in which you don’t pay for the users just for calls if you are part of a large company with significant call volumes. Truth be told, this one is our favorite.
Fill up the registration form: You will get a verification email within 15 to 20 minutes. Click on the link and verify your email address. Once you click on the link, your email address will be confirmed, and you will be asked to log into your CallHippo account.
Click Sign up with G suite if you have a Google workspace account. This will be here because you don’t need to confirm your email address anymore. So, no waiting.
After logging in in the top right, click on the button Add number.
Select the Country of your choice.
Then fix the virtual number you want from the list, or you can search from the search bar
Select ok to make your selection confirm.
That’s all
CallHippo features highlight
Power Dialer: You will notice the ‘power dialog’ function on the left-hand panel after you log into your CallHippo Web App. If you copy it, you may browse to a campaign window; sales calls in the United States, let’s say. You may then submit an excellent sheet with all the contact numbers given below. In the same campaign, you can assign one or more agents.
Smart Switch: Smart Switch is a simple switching mechanism that allows the agents to interact and pick the one that works with numerous telephone carriers. This gives the agent console the freedom to customize it according to their own requirements. This leads to improved call connection.
Global Connect: Global Connect enables you to determine the time for foreign customers to call. It helps you determine a nation’s time zone (day, date and time) and the validity of the number that you want to dial for a certain country.
Smart Call Forwarding: Each user can opt to route calls to numerous telephones so that they can still be accessed on the go. It lets you send incoming calls to a substitute jiffy number! Get your personal phone number after hours of business or hop it over a number of phones, without your caller knowing anything in the background!
Call Transfer: Make sure the caller can communicate with the correct person using the helpful and practical function of CallHippo Call Transfer. Perfect for intra-company and inter-ministerial call transfers, just forward a connected telephone call to the desired extension of the team member.
Call Conference: Work with your customers across the world with the highly efficient CallHippo Call Conference function. Remote meetings, all with a smooth user interface and experience to accomplish your objectives faster.
Call Analytics: With the specific Call Analytics function of CallHippo, you may renovate and evaluate the effectiveness of your present marketing policy. Track the call volume records, the call length, input and output routing calls by clicking a button!
Pros and Cons of CallHippo
Pros
Comparatively easy to set up
Free plan is available
Large number of features
Phone numbers from 50+ countries
Competitive price
Cons
Lack of desk phone
No fax support
Platform only available in English
Rating after using CallHippo
VoIP Bible
Call Quality
Number Portability
Number Availability
App Experience
Desktop User Experience
Features
Pricing
Summary
CallHippo pricing is simple, unlike other firms in the market. Firstly, the free plan is appropriate for an entrepreneur since it already offers many features, including a free softphone, forward-to-device and third-party integration. CallHippo was incredibly easy to use for our staff, and it was super fast to set up. It performed really well for the temporary demands of our project. Set up and use really efficiently. Excellent customer assistance. The most fascinating part of the program is that we can make outgoing calls and receive calls from across the world and enhance our customer experience and sales. So for us, this really is a fantastic product. It would have been wonderful to create a team chat plugin for my website with zoom and zendesk, but for now, we believe that CallHippo has room to expand and integrate their product interface, which might be essential to your business in the future.
4.8
Where should I get a USA Virtual Phone Number from for Toll-Free Calling Today?
Well, we have tried for companies and tried to find the best one for virtual phone numbers. We were pretty much happy with all of these. But depending on your need, you can choose from any one of the fours. If you want a 100% free Virtual phone number, you would recommend going for Sonetel. If you’re going to integrate it with many systems like CRM or third-party Salesforce applications, then RingCentral or even PhoneBurner can be your best option. But our choice was CallHippo. Truth be told, CallHippo has a downside. It doesn’t allow you to integrate it directly with any PBX or business phone systems. But if you are a call center and desk phones are not your forte, we definitely recommend you try to CallHippo. But that was our recommendation. You should definitely check out all the features we have mentioned and then decide what is best for you. Ultimately it’s your business, and it’s your choice.
In the past twenty years, a new phenomenon has appeared – a virtual phone number. You can easily buy a virtual phone number from many providers and use it as your business phone number. They are also known as local phone numbers or toll-free numbers in the US.
A virtual phone number is a phone number that can represent your business without having to purchase an actual physical phone line. Virtual numbers are typically cheaper than landline services, and providers offer a wide variety of options for the type of virtual number you want. If you’re looking to start your own business, this may be the perfect option!
The person you are calling doesn’t need to know that you are using a virtual number as your business number. You may have to mention this fact during your conversation if required.
Virtual numbers are used for various purposes, such as masking your business number, finding out more about your business, marketing your business more effectively, and so on. Virtual numbers give you the freedom to use any number you want without installing separate hardware or software. You can choose to use a local phone number or national phone number depending on your needs.
Recently, the FBI warned about voice phishing attacks. DDoS Attacks targeted Top UK VoIP Providers. Due to CoVID-19, Unified Communications and VoIP service users working from home are affected by a lack of security in their VoIP services. So, the question raised into our mind, “How you can protect your VoIP network from threats?” and “What to do to ensure your the Safety and Security of your VoIP phone system?” That’s why we talked to top security specialists. And, according to their recommendation, we enlisted the 12 best actions to guarantee that your VoIP security, cash, and reputation are safe from wrong actors on the Internet.
Contents
Strong Passwords and Two-Factor Authentication or 2FA should be used to protect user credentials
Strong Passwords and Two-Factor Authentication or 2FA should be used to protect user credentials For VoIP Security.
It goes without saying that changing the password on your VoIP phone or device is essential. Like many network devices that can be managed via a web interface, VoIP phones come with a default password that must be changed immediately. The default login is generally admin/admin, and it should be changed the first time you log in to the phone.
While default credentials vary depending on the manufacturer and model, they are collected with a simple Google search but hardly ever use a strong password.
If your company has a credential management policy, it’s a good idea to apply it to both desk phones and the online interface. A solid credential management policy, which includes expiration and complexity criteria, is critical to successfully managing security credentials. It’s a good idea to encourage staff to change their passwords regularly.
All users of your VoIP phone system should be required to utilize two-factor authentication. Well-known VoIP companies give 2FA to users and allow you to check on the online dashboard to ensure that all users have successfully enabled the functionality.
Perform periodic call log reviews
Perform Periodic Call Log Reviews To Become Sure About VoIP Safety
This security advice needs very little technical understanding of networks or VoIP systems in general. It is, nevertheless, recommended practice to conduct frequent audits of VoIP traffic in call records. The majority of well-known VoIP companies offer extensive call statistics with data such as:
call duration on average
hold time on average
total number of incoming and outgoing phone calls
total number of calls / total number of missed calls
total time spent by the user
You may quickly detect significant variations in inactivity by monitoring these call records and comparing period to period. These bits of information can guide you in the direction of places where there may be gaps or abuse.
Administrators should look for unusual call durations, locations, and times when outbound calls are started. Any anomalies in these logs should be looked into to confirm that your system has not been hacked.
When looking for a new VoIP service, detailed call reporting is a crucial feature to look for, and top VoIP Service Providers provide real-time call monitoring. These records will reveal a lot about your baseline usage and will be important in monitoring the health of your phone system and planning for future expansion.
Disable international calling or turn on geo-fencing
Disable International Calling Or Turn On Geo-Fencing
Bad actors on the Internet will frequently try to use VoIP systems to make international calls that will bill your account – this is known as a toll scam. It’s bad enough that your system or network has been hacked, but accruing use on calls you didn’t make adds salt to injury.
It’s a good idea to enable geofencing if you need to make international calls. Geo-fencing is also used on network firewalls and email servers to block access to countries with many potential hackers.
VoIP systems such as 3CX, Dialpad, 8×8, Ringcentral, and Nextiva allow you to restrict unwanted calls to/from particular countries, area codes, and phone numbers. On the VoIP Service Dashboard or Security Settings, you may add countries to a blacklist to prevent incoming and/or outgoing calls from that country. Another comparable precaution would be to utilize IP blacklists on your firewall to prevent connections to known malicious IP addresses, including VoIP traffic. IP blacklists are available on reliable public aggregator sites like dnschecker.org.
Use SaaS for VoIP Calls
Use SaaS For VoIP Calls
As individuals and huge companies use the knowledge of professionals to handle a complicated piece of software or application, software as a service has become an essential element of day-to-day office operations. Rather than constructing and maintaining your own VoIP infrastructure, consider outsourcing your PBX and VoIP services to a SaaS provider.
Most VoIP service providers offer a rich feature set out of the box, a user-friendly UI, and complete support. Furthermore, built-in security mechanisms safeguard you against fraudulent activity on your account and can serve as an extra set of eyes to avoid significant breaches.
Keep Security Patches Up to Date
Keep Security Patches Up To Date
Your VoIP phone, like other network security devices and PCs, must be updated.
Before deploying your VoIP system, it is a good idea to change the firmware on your IP phones in addition to altering the default credentials. Updating the firmware guarantees that the most recent security updates are implemented and that any vulnerability gaps are closed before your phone system goes live. Firmware upgrades should be reviewed regularly (quarterly is suggested), deployed as soon as feasible, and included in the overall update plan for all networked devices as part of the IT asset management strategy.
Make use of a Router with a Firewall
Make use of a Router with a Firewall for VoIP Safety
We occasionally hear about people connecting their IP phones straight to the Internet without utilizing a router or firewall. This implies that anyone with an internet connection may access the phone’s web interface. If the phone’s administrator password is still the factory default – well, that makes the perpetrator’s job too easy.
Check that the router is not in bridge mode, which disables all routing functions and assigns a public IP address to all devices on the network. Looking at the phone’s IP addresses is a fast approach to see if your network is in bridge mode or not. If the IP addresses begin with 192.168.x.x or 10.10.x.x, you are in a closed network and should be OK. If your phone’s IP address seems to be different, make sure it’s linked to a router and that the router is not in Bridge Mode. If your router has a firewall, you should always turn it on. Firewalls monitor network traffic and attempt to prevent anything that appears to be suspicious.
Restriction on Physical Access to Networking Equipment
Restriction On Physical Access To Networking Equipment
Networking equipment should be kept in a closed room or cabinet that only the IT staff can access. Securing access to the physical hardware that connects your network is critical to preserving the integrity of all of your IT services, including VoIP. To safeguard your networking room, consider installing security cameras and implementing an access record that is inspected regularly.
Restrict User Permissions
Restrict User Permissions which helps prevent being hacked for mistakes made by users
VoIP Services provides a web interface to help you configure the device and access extra functions and customization choices. The web interface also controls how it communicates with the VoIP system. Therefore it will require your user credentials. While the web interface might make the setup more straightforward, it is another entry point into your VoIP system that must be protected.
As previously stated, robust security credentials are required to access the web interface. Still, services such as RingCentral or Nextiva also enable multiple degrees of user rights to restrict system access. Users with default access can only view their own call logs and messages. Administrators can provide users additional permissions to handle different aspects of the system, such as call flows, billing, and other users. Make sure you use caution when giving user rights and that users with administrator access have 2FA activated.
Ensure Data Encryption
It is critical to deal with a VoIP provider who encrypts call processing data transferred between VoIP servers and your network. Renowned VoIP Service Providers guarantee end-to-end encryption throughout all conversations and messages for the duration of the data.
It is also critical that your network is secured to avoid damage from malicious actors snooping around your systems. Even if someone gains access to your machine, encrypted VoIP connections ensure that the data is inaccessible to them.
Educate Users
Your VoIP users are only a component of your system’s first line of protection against fraudulent behaviour, but they may be one of the most effective. Proper education about security credentials and what to expect from the standard quality of service on VoIP conversations may aid in the security of your system. End users who are educated provide you with an extra set of eyes to check for unusual behaviour that might signal that your system has been compromised.
It is also critical to establish standards for what should be shared during a phone conversation to avoid the unintentional exposure of personally identifiable information, company data, identity theft, or other personally intrusive criminal behaviour. Security training should also be seen as a continuous activity. As new security concerns and possible attacks arise, it is critical that your training evolves to meet these unknown risks. Keep your users informed because they are the ones who will be utilizing the system daily.
Prevent Ghost Calls
Incoming calls with no one on the other end are known as ghost calls, and they are one method used by hackers to access your phone system.
When hackers seek for phones to attack, they use a technique known as port scanning. This is a strategy in which they rapidly send particular data requests to millions of different IP addresses on the Internet and then wait for any responses. For example, when an IP phone receives an incoming call, they generally transmit the same data request as a VoIP server – the request that causes the phone to ring.
When the phone gets this request, it will notify the sender that it was received and that the phone has begun to ring. When the hacker gets the confirmation, he knows an IP phone on this IP address and may attempt to penetrate it. If the phone isn’t behind a router/firewall at the same time, and the default password hasn’t been changed – well, that’s just making things too simple.
However, if the phone is secured, the hacker has a minimal possibility of gaining access and exploiting the phone. However, he can continue to submit these port scan requests to make the phone ring, which can be pretty unpleasant for coworkers. This is when you’ll hear ghost calls.
Fortunately, there is a simple technique to avoid unwanted ghost calls. Most IP phones include an option that instructs them only to accept incoming calls from the server to which they are connected.
Deploy Intrusion Prevention Systems
Intrusion prevention systems will monitor your VoIP system’s overall performance and balance the strain on your network to guarantee that your quality of service stays good. Together with other security elements, these load balancing techniques will identify anomalous behavior that occurs after a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS).
In addition to the preventive measures built into the top or new VoIP platforms, intrusion prevention systems might be featured on your firewall. It is critical to consult with your IT department to determine what tools are available to you and maintain them up to date on the most recent security updates.
Let’s summarize, “What to do to ensure your the Safety and Security of your VoIP phone system?”
You can also keep a note of the following points to make sure you are not forgetting anything.
How you can protect your VoIP network from threats?
Strong Passwords and Two-Factor Authentication or 2FA should be used to protect user credentials. While default credentials vary depending on the manufacturer and model, they are collected with a simple Google search but hardly ever use a strong password.
Perform periodic call log reviews. It is, nevertheless, recommended practice to conduct frequent audits of VoIP traffic in call records.
call duration on average
hold time on average
total number of incoming and outgoing phone calls
total number of calls / total number of missed calls
total time spent by the user
Disable international calling or turn on geo-fencing. It’s a good idea to enable geofencing if you need to make international calls. Geo-fencing is also used on network firewalls and email servers to block access to countries with many potential hackers.
Use SaaS for VoIP Calls. Built-in security mechanisms safeguard you against fraudulent activity on your account and can serve as an extra set of eyes to avoid significant breaches.
Keep Security Patches Up to Date. Firmware upgrades should be reviewed regularly (quarterly is suggested), deployed as soon as feasible, and included in the overall update plan for all networked devices as part of the IT asset management strategy.
Make use of a Router with a Firewall. Check that the router is not in bridge mode, which disables all routing functions and assigns a public IP address to all devices on the network. Looking at the phone’s IP addresses is a fast approach to see if your network is in bridge mode or not. If the IP addresses begin with 192.168.x.x or 10.10.x.x, you are in a closed network and should be OK. If your phone’s IP address seems to be different, make sure it’s linked to a router and that the router is not in Bridge Mode.
Restriction on Physical Access to Networking Equipment. To safeguard your networking room, consider installing security cameras and implementing an access record that is inspected regularly.
Restrict User Permissions. The web interface also controls how it communicates with the VoIP system. Therefore it will require your user credentials. While the web interface might make the setup more straightforward, it is another entry point into your VoIP system that must be protected.
Ensure Data Encryption. Renowned VoIP Service Providers guarantee end-to-end encryption throughout all conversations and messages for the duration of the data.
Educate Users. Your VoIP users are only a component of your system’s first line of protection against fraudulent behavior, but they may be one of the most effective.
Prevent Ghost Calls. When hackers seek for phones to attack, they use a technique known as port scanning. This is a strategy in which they rapidly send particular data requests to millions of different IP addresses on the Internet and then wait for any responses.
Deploy Intrusion Prevention Systems. Intrusion prevention systems will monitor your VoIP system’s overall performance and balance the strain on your network to guarantee that your quality of service stays good.
The Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA) states that DDoS has attacked at least three UK VoIP suppliers.
Recently, three of the top UK VoIP providers have been targeted by DDoS attacks. In a statement to Reuters, one of the attackers claimed that a client had hired them to take down the companies.
This is not surprising as cyberattacks on VoIP providers have been on the increase since last year. Security experts have found that many of these attacks are being carried out for political reasons.
This morning, in an email, CCA said that it has heard of a “sophisticated, precise, and ongoing attack” likely to be carried out by the Russian cybercriminal organization REvil. In December 2016, a Russian-based VoIP firm was targeted with a DDoS attack because it hosted a line for the Turkish president’s party. And this January, two additional top VoIP providers were taken down by cyberattacks for hosting bars with electioneers from Pakistan and Algeria, respectively.
Last week, two providers confirmed that they were victims of the attack, but CCA did not name the third.
The attack on its core network started on August 31 and was ongoing for 75 hours, according to Poole-based Voip Unlimited. This morning, an update from the company claimed that there was no additional attack during the weekend.
Voipfone, situated in London, declared its attack simultaneously and indicated that its services are entirely operating and traffic constantly monitored this morning.
During the three days, both companies saw their services affected.
CCA said the perpetrators demanded lettuce, beginning with 1 Bitcoin but escalating rapidly.
The assault consists of hammering a company’s network with traffic between 100 and 450 gigabits per second, usually several times for up to 24 hours. It begins with an IP address assault used for SIP input and input and subsequently migrates to additional services.
CCA claimed that the attack could avoid a few conventional mechanisms of DDoS mitigation.
The Director, Voip Unlimited, Mark Pillow, explained: “At 2 p.m. August 31, a prominent and sophisticated DDoS attack linked to an enormous demand for ransoms fell on VoIP Unlimited’s network.
“The United Kingdom Comms Council has informed us that other UK SIP providers are affected and identified as the criminal hacking organization called REvil which seems to undertake planned and organized operations against VoIP companies in Great Britain through DDoS.”
VoIP providers should be aware of this new trend.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States has issued a warning regarding campaigns in which threat actors target employees all over the world using voice phishing (also known as vishing) assaults to obtain their network passwords and raise user privileges.
The warning can be ascribed in part to the COVID-19 epidemic has driven many businesses to transition to telework, which may not allow for complete monitoring of network access points and privilege escalation. The warning is partly because the COVID-19 epidemic has driven many firms to switch to telework, making thorough network access point monitoring and privilege escalation difficult.
The Bureau cited a campaign that began in December 2019 and involved attackers using Voice over IP (VoIP) platforms and a company chatroom to lure credentials into corporate networks from employees at big organizations in the United States and internationally.
According to the FBI’s description of one attack vector, employees were fooled into signing into a phishing webpage during the phone calls to collect the employee’s login and password, which frequently uses fake caller ID numbers that hide the criminal’s location and identity.
Soon after, the threat actors discovered that they could penetrate the networks further than they had anticipated and even increase permissions on the compromised accounts.
In some instances, attackers can infect a company’s systems with malware, trawl through its data for proprietary information, or get access to executive account credentials to commit Business Email Compromise (BEC) fraud. Any of this has the potential to be highly costly to a business.
In another example, cyber crooks approached an employee using the company’s chatroom and tricked him into signing onto a fake Virtual Private Network (VPN) website. They then used the stolen account credentials to access the company’s network, where they looked for an employee who could alter usernames and emails. The hackers discovered their target via a cloud-based payroll service and then used the chatroom method to phish the victim’s credentials.
The federal law enforcement agency also offered tips on how businesses may reduce the danger of cyberattacks. Multi-factor authentication, active scanning and monitoring of illegal access, network segmentation, and frequent assessments of employee network access are all examples of this.
The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a similar alert in August 2020, warning of a spike in vishing attacks aimed at various organizations’ employees. Threat actors employed identical techniques to gain account credentials in multiple assaults, including fake VPN sites.
