Frequently Asked Questions

A Virtual Phone System is a complete pbx that exists entirely in the cloud that will scale automatically with your needs and requires zero maintenance.

With a Virtual Phone System you can use high quality voip desktop phones, your existing mobile phones, or even computer or smartphone based softphones (software phones).

Broadband Phone Service (voip or voice over ip) is a technology that enables voice communications over the Internet through the compression of voice into data packets that can be efficiently transmitted over data networks and then converted back into voice at the other end.

Data networks, such as the Internet or your local area networks (lan), have always utilized packet-switched technology to transmit information between two communicating terminals (for example, a PC downloading a page from a web server, or one computer sending an e-mail message to another computer).

The most common protocol used for communicating on these packet-switched networks is Internet Protocol, or IP.

Broadband Phone Service (voip) allows for the transmission of voice along with other data over these same packet-switched networks and provides an alternative to traditional telephone networks, which use a fixed electrical path to carry voice signals through a series of switches to a destination.

With services in the cloud you don't have to worry about things like upgrades, security, redundancy, and scalability, we do all that for you transparently and automatically.

In the case of a our Broadband Phone Service, it means a total phone system that is available instantly and eliminates the need for extensive on-site equipment.

Broadband Phone Service (voip) is much less expensive than traditional phone service, especially in cases of multiple business locations, mobile workers and telecommuters, heavy long distance or international calling.

VoIP is also far more versatile than traditional telephone systems with features such as Auto Attendants, Voicemail and Fax to Email, Find Me / Follow Me, Call Recording and more.

Broadband Phone Service is a great way to reduce phone bills and to improve the professional appearance of a small and medium businesses. The many features can make the customer facing presence of a small business much more streamlined, professional and efficient.

IronVoice offers an affordable and easy to use broadband telephone service and complete phone system for small and medium businesses.

Designed with small and medium business customers in mind, IronVoice allows any business or home office with a broadband (high speed) Internet connection to use IP telephones or PC based softphones to make unlimited calls to anywhere in the US48 and Canada.

IronVoice offers advanced features typically only available with expensive enterprise class phone systems such as Auto Attendants, Call Recording, Electronic Faxing, Voicemail and Fax to Email, Advanced Call Distribution Queues, Call Groups, Custom Music or Advertising on Hold and more.

IronVoice sends all incoming and outgoing calls over a high speed Internet connection (instead of the traditional public telephone networks) using affordable high quality IP telephones. There are no extra numbers to dial, no special instructions to follow and no talking through your computer (unless you choose to use a PC based softphone). Just pick up your phone, listen for the dial tone and dial any regular phone number. Incoming calls ring your phone the same as any traditional phone.

No, but you can certainly use our service from any broadband (high speed) Internet connection.

Yes. With IronVoice you can request that your number be "ported" at anytime, as long as you maintain phone service for the number you want to transfer for the course of the process.

Yes. We will always approve port-outs to other carriers as long as your account is in good standing and our service is month-to-month with no contracts, you can cancel at any time.

Yes. You can cancel your service at any time. Please see our Terms of Service for additional details.

No. Our service is month-to-month, no contracts and no long term obligation.

Typical monthly savings over traditional phone service is 30-60%.

Yes, only business class IP Phones or PC based softphones are needed to use our service.

If you have a traditional telephone system with a PBX that equipment can be quietly retired along with any associated ongoing support and maintenance costs.

No, not even if you're porting numbers from another carrier.

You can deploy your new phones along side your current phones and once your numbers port calls will seamlessly flow from your old service to your new phones without missing a call.

Your account can be activated in as little as 15 minutes.

Our technical support is fast, friendly, helpful and responsive. Customers get to rate our support at every interval and we publish that Support Rating Index for all to see. Please see our Technical Support Policy for additional details.

Whoever currently supports it, with our guidance if necessary. Our pricing doesn't include local area network support and given the overwhelming vast differences in networks and associated equipment there is no possible way to provide adequate technical support without being on site.

Our service has no concept of lines, but rather you choose how many shared "trunks" or "channels" you want available for calls to and from the public telephone network. Internal and on-net calls never use your trunks. Generally, you want a 1:3 ratio on trunks to phones. You can instantly add or remove trunks as necessary.

A typical phone call will use approximately 24k of your broadband connection's available bandwidth.

Everybody talks about bandwidth and how they can sell you more of it but nobody talks about bandwidth's quiet but equally important cousin, latency.

While bandwidth is how much information you can pump over your connection, latency is how fast you can pump it. Latency is measured in milliseconds and anything consistently less than 200ms will sustain toll-quality calls.

Broadband Phone Service (voip) requires a reasonably high-bandwidth and low-latency Internet connection.

None, assuming you have a standard broadband connection. You can have a fully functional phone system and be placing and receiving calls in as little as 15 minutes with our Just Add Phones model and Powerfully Simple Administrator Portal and helpful Instructional Videos. If you do need help or have questions, you can get fast and responsive support from our helpdesk.

We have absolutely the lowest pricing when compared to our competition with more included features.

Our pricing is flat-rate with a couple exceptions, there are no hidden fees or charges. Please see the Price List for a complete list of fees and charges.

You can request a quote to see exactly what your monthly phone bill can be with our service.

The Universal Service Fee is essentially just a mandatory government tax intended to levy telecommunication companies to fund communications infrastructure development in areas with no local resources.

None. You control your service through our easy to use Administrator Portal.

Our service will deliver Voicemail and Faxes to your current email address as attachments which means you can have all of your messages available in a single "unified" inbox.

It depends. If you're not currently using a Broadband Phone Service (voip) you will need to buy new phones. Our service works with industry high quality business class IP Phones by Polycom and others. Business class IP Phones provide superior call quality and features when compared to standard telephones.

An oustanding phone at a great price would be the popular Polycom SoundPoint-IP 331 phone generally found for around $100.

Some providers force you into propriatary hardware that's locked in to their service. While we'll be happy to provide phones it really doesn't matter where you get them as long as they are on our supported Devices and Phones list.

A softphone is software that you install on your PC and use to place and receive voice and video calls with a headset and microphone. These are typically used by receptionists or high volume call centers and work as good as IP phones.

Note: Our service will support both business class IP telephones as well as a variety of PC based softphones.

Just about any standard softphone will work with our service but we recommend and fully support Bria and Bria for Outlook for both voice and video calls.

There is a variety of great free and commercial softphones available for all popular computers and operating systems. Please see Devices and Phones for details on what phones we support.

The Express Router is only recommended for locations where bandwidth is limited and a lot of phones are needed.

Faxing over the Internet to standard fax machines doesn't work very well. With IronVoice you get Electronic Faxing included with every package at no additional charge.

With Electronic Faxing you can receive faxes (sent from a standard fax machine to one of your IronVoice phone numbers) via email or preview and download faxes right from our portal.

IronVoice offers T.38 faxing with supported equipment giving you the ability to receive faxes with a standard fax machine.

Yes. Over the past few decades, public safety agencies throughout the country have invested hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading their 911 systems to Enhanced 911 (E911).

E911 service delivers address-specific (versus phone number-only) call-back information to public service answering points (PSAPs) whenever someone makes an emergency call. This enables emergency personnel to be dispatched to the scene even if the caller is unable to speak or if the call is suddenly disconnected.

In October 2007, IronVoice became one of the first broadband Internet telephone service providers to offer E911 service to consumers. Our E911 service by Intrado automatically routes emergency calls, along with computer-based "screen pops" of caller information, to dispatch operators at local PSAPs.

Since IronVoice E911 calls are routed as emergency traffic, callers should expect to receive the same response from emergency personnel that they would receive from traditional 911 service, subject to the capabilities of the local PSAP. IronVoice E911 service eliminates the need for operators to ask callers their location, which could be vital in cases where the caller may not be able to verbally communicate.