Differentiable VoIP features include a temporary voice mail greeting with a configurable number and also enhanced centralized unified messaging. The king of features remains the quality of voice transmission though. This is what business users want the most of. That there is great room for improvement in international calls and business conferences is a common opinion. High definition audio quality could be the next big “feature” of VoIP.

This interesting analysis features in fiercevoip.com.

I checked local service for a customer in Illinois this morning, and Cleartel came back with pretty good rates. Cleartel was offering two local business plans to choose from. The first plan offered unlimited local calling, plus 2 phone features, for $29.95 per month. The second plan let you add 2000 minutes of monthly long distance to the service to the first plan for only $10.00 per month more, for a total monthly rate of $39.95.

Check for local business phone service rates in your area at Cleartel’s Website.

Google Voice has some cool features, but, if you’re paranoid, these features might also freak you out a bit. Google’s new service will issue you a new phone number, and that number will be able to be set to ring to all of your current phone numbers and track you down. The service also has the ability to take phone messages, turn them into written transcripts and email them to you. This will give you the ability to search your text voice mail content, which is cool and scary at the same time.

It’s cool, because with this service it will be really easy to organize your life, but the scary part may just be more than most people will be interested in subjecting themselves to. Since Google’s ToS says they pretty much own anything you do when you use their free services, they may own your voice, the content of the voice mails you get and they will also have the ability to data mine your voice mails if they so choose. I don’t know about you, but that scares the bejesus out of me.

For a good article on the whole thing, visit Csmonitor.com.

The hospital’s telecom audit showed that they were spending too much in the following areas:

1. Local Phone Service: $26,800.95 per month.
2. Long Distance Service: $8,175.54 per month.
3. Cell Phone Service: $5750 per month.
4. Paging Services: $5197.46 per month.

Every business should have an annual telecom audit of their phone bills, their cell phone bills and their local bills. By doing an audit, the hospital above was able to save $800,000.00 per year, and your business could end up save a substatial amount of money also. If you would like your bills audited for free, please email them to info@calling-plans.com.

You wouldn’t think that full minute vs. 1/10th minute rounding would make a lot of difference, but it does. For example, if you made 1000 2.1 minute phone calls with Pioneer, that would cost you the same as 1000 3 minute calls, or $81.00. Those same 1000 2.1 minute calls with TCI would cost you $63.00. Sure it’s not a lot, but if you’re running a whole bunch of lines without your own T1, it can really add up.

TCI’s toll free and PICC fees are also cheaper than Pioneer’s. TCI’s monthly toll free fee is $1.00 per line per month for the first number, and 50¢ for each additional number. Pioneer’s fees for toll free service are 99¢ per number per month. (OK, it’s cheaper than TCI if you only get one, but who can stop at one?)  TCI’s PICC Fee for business lines is $2.75 per month per line, with the first line being free. Pioneer’s PICC fee is $4.21, so if you have very many lines, that can really add up too.

Since I’m really a fan of both companies, you should go to the rate calculator at Lowertel.com and run the numbers for your state’s instate and state to state calling rates to find out which one of these companies will be the best for your businesses bottom line. You can also drop me a line at info@calling-plans.com, and I will gladly run some numbers for you and show you how much you can save by moving to one of these discount carriers.