Why VoIP?

. . . How telephones are undergoing the biggest change since Alexander Graham Bell first invented them — and how ESI is leading the way in that race to the future.

The telephone became a part of our culture over 100 years ago and, for more than a century, all phone calls were made the same way. You picked up the phone and accessed the public telephone network. Each and every phone call was connected by a dedicated circuit that stayed open for the duration of the call — until one of you hung up.

That all changed in the late 1990s. By that time, engineers started to convert telephone conversations into data packets — small chunks of digital data exactly like those that PCs use to communicate. Once converted into packets, telephone conversations could be transported anywhere that computer data packets could go — including the Internet: a revolutionary concept.

Welcome to the world of Internet telephony.

Sometimes called VoIP (for Voice over Internet Protocol), Internet telephony removes traditional boundaries. Phone calls are no longer limited to the telephone network. Through an amazing technological advancement, a whole new world of opportunity presents itself to the intelligent business owner.

ESI IP-enabled telephone systems offer the ability to connect telephone stations (with all the features and functionality one would expect from ESI) in any location anywhere in the world. Imagine sitting in a branch office in St. Louis or Seattle, using a phone that is an actual extension from your home office in Dallas.

For businesses that need more than just an extension outside of headquarters, our Esi-Link technology can connect the ESI phone systems (and, with the appropriate hardware, even non-ESI phone systems) at up to 100 branch offices. These multiple branch offices, as well as remote users, instantly communicate together, effectively creating one large system. As a result, each of these individual locations offers virtually all of the same features as the extensions sitting in the main office, without distance limitations. Additionally, each of the phone systems can function independently, taking full advantage of ESI’s unique, robust features.

The future is now. Imagine the possibilities — and then let your imagination become reality.