How Did VoIP Help to Keep Us Working in 2020?

2020 was, for just about everyone on the planet, completely unprecedented. COVID-19 not only forced millions of people to stay indoors for the sake of their health, it also forced many of us to rethink the way that we work with each other and run businesses. Office spaces became ‘only if necessary’ resources, meaning that working from home became more than just a niche interest.

Unfortunately, many people lost their jobs. Even 12 months on, businesses and even whole industries are still trying to recover from what has possibly been the most monumental social disaster of the modern age. However, we are fortunate enough to live in a time period where we can still communicate with each other, and work freely, thanks to technological innovation. Where would our offices, and many of our job roles, be – if COVID-19 had hit in 1991, rather than 2021?

When it comes to those jobs saved during the pandemic thus far, we really do have technology to thank. VoIP, ultimately, has helped to keep millions of people working, and hundreds of thousands of businesses pivoting during an incredibly difficult time.

A New Normal

VoIP is more than just ‘emerging technology’. Voice Over IP is the new standard for communications in the corporate world. It stands to reason that PSTN and traditional cabling are on the way out. Even BT has recognised this and will be retiring its traditional telephony by the middle of the decade. That said, before the pandemic hit, there were still business owners who were unsure whether or not VoIP was worth the risk of adopting.

This past year has proven that remote working is, to borrow a much-used phrase in the media, ‘the new normal’. VoIP, as it is based entirely off-site, does not rely on complex cabling or telephony in-house. Companies and agents are able to take their calls and projects completely off-grid, meaning that it is still entirely possible for them to connect to the same commercial standard of comms, while not having to actually tie themselves to a physical desk or phone.

There is also the fact that VoIP is always scaling upwards. SIP trunking, too, enables users to communicate freely through a raft of individual video conferencing services. 2020 was the year that we all discovered ‘Zoom’, for example. This was certainly the year that socially distanced meetings came into the norm, and as such, business owners and individual agents everywhere took to the web to look for new ways to keep in touch.

Where PSTN failed during the pandemic, VoIP soared. It is thanks to the innovations in IP voice comms that led business owners to admit that they would be moving to a more permanent remote working model for the years to come. European business owners claim, in the majority, that a remote working system will be in place post-pandemic as a result of their experiences thus far.

It is devastating that it has taken a global crisis such as COVID-19 to have opened so many eyes to remote working and communications flexibility. However, even beyond the pandemic, VoIP will still be here to allow for maximum scalability well into the next decade.

Is Now to Time to Move to VoIP?

For many people, the necessity to move to a remote working model forced several hands. Those who may have held off on VoIP ahead of the BT switchover mid-decade may now be more ready to move things over to the leading technological standard.

Now really is the best time to adopt VoIP. PSTN, while it has served millions of us proudly, is no longer flexible enough to allow for remote or home working in the post-COVID age. VoIP is already flexible and scalable enough for business owners and their agents to start working wherever they need to.

Remote working in the mainstream has been on the cards for many, many years. Several experts will have advised that it was only a matter of time before VoIP tipped the balance. Sadly, it took a global health crisis to really get us all moving in the right direction.

Want to know more about VoIP? Take a look at packages available from VoIPer and start streamlining the way you communicate.