Hosted Telephony or cloud based telephony is similar in technology to SIP but doesn’t require the phone system at all. Each user has an extension that is connected to the Internet and connects to the hosted providers’ telephone system. In essence, this is a large Enterprise or Exchange grade solutions that has been partitioned to provide separate accounts for each business that subscribes.

The hosted solution you choose may be just the end user phone account or it can be the whole solution including the Internet connection. Some hosted providers insist on using their own Internet connection so as all users are on their proprietary network, referred to as On Net. Careful consideration of the final solution needs to be taken so as not to get a poor telephone service for your business.

Existing phone numbers can be migrated to the hosted provider’s network so you can retain your existing published phone numbers.