If you’re considering a VoIP phone service for your business, it’s important to use a Bandwidth speed test to determine if and how many phone lines your connection can handle in order to sustain high-quality voice calls.
Bandwidth is defined as the ability to transfer data (such as a VoIP telephone call) from one point to another in a fixed amount of time. The higher the bandwidth speed you have, the more data you can send over your Broadband Internet connection.
There are two types of bandwidth at your location, upload and download bandwidth. The upload is the amount of data you can send to the Internet and download speed is the rate at which data is transferred from the Internet to your computer.
The bandwidth that your VOIP phone service requires depends on the number of concurrent calls you want to make.
The best way to determine your bandwidth, is to run a throughput test using a site like www.speedtest.net. This will give you a basic idea of your current functional bandwidth, but it is important to note that this can vary as it all depends on exactly which applications you have running at any given time. This test also provides variable results depending on the location used for testing.
Bandwidth (Upload Speed) |
Approximate Number of Lines |
500 Kbps |
1 |
1 Mbps |
2 |
5 Mbps |
11 |
10 Mbps |
22 |
30 Mbps |
66 |
It is worth noting that your upload speed is often slower than your download speed, so make sure that the lower number of the upload speed matches what you need.
Our advice is to always run your VoIP phones were possible on a high quality Internet connection with at least 100 Kbps upload bandwidth available for each call in progress at the same time.
If you are running up to 3 or 4 phones and do choose to run your system on a basic broadband service which is also running your email and Internet browsing etc., we strongly recommend that you trial your VoIP phone before going live and be prepared to install a separate telephone line and broadband service if needed.
If you are considering implementing a VoIP telephone system into your business and would like some free independent advice on the best way to go about this, the please contact us now on 0345 389 2310. Alternatively, you can download our telephone systems buyers guide as useful reference material or even run a quick quote to obtain a budget cost for a new telephone system in less than 60 seconds.
To find out which type of phone system could work best in your business visit out telephone systems product page by clicking here.
