As little as five years ago, the only disasters businesses had to worry about were natural disasters, local environmental problems, and a few single points of telecommunications failures. Today you can add bioterrorism, suitcase nukes, unprecedented numbers of hurricane strikes, and a multitude of other problems to a growing list of risks that have the potential to bring a business to an economic standstill or even cause permanent business failure.

There is only one telecommunications solution that has the flexibility and capability to ensure business continuity and to keep business communications running in a major catastrophe -- VoIP hosted PBX service.

When choosing a VOIP Hosted PBX vendor, a business needs to ensure the vendor's service provides employees a variety of ways to have their incoming calls handled during a crisis, including setting advanced call handling options to follow them wherever they go and access to features that allow them to set up shop at any working telephone number, or - at the very least - to have calls answered by a user's voicemail or the main number's Automated Attendant.

Business continuity planners need to develop plans to protect telecommunications services in the same way they protect their websites and email. The most cost efficient way to accomplish this objective is to outsource the delivery and management of these services to a secure, redundant VoIP Hosted PBX provider. This will enable the business to capitalize on the ubiquity of the Internet to deliver a disaster-proof phone system which is accessible from anywhere an Internet connection is available.

Businesses used to purchase and install PBX phone systems at their physical location and then connect them into phone lines. With this configuration, anything that made the physical space unusable also affected the communications service. In contrast, VOIP Hosted PBX service provides phone service over the Internet from a centralized, secure operations center. Since the service is virtual and not physically located on the business premises, conditions at the customer's physical location do not adversely affect telecommunications service operation and provisioning.

In summary, when it comes to business continuity, Voip Hosted Phone Service provides key advantages over all other systems on the market today:

- No Busy Signal: "Always On" phone service capable of receiving, answering and routing calls during any type of disruption at the physical location.

- Accessible from Anywhere: Users have access to real-time, web-based control of call handling options from any Internet connection around the world.

- Easy Remote Operation: Users can easily turn any working telephone into their office phone, letting them place and receive calls from remote phones while showing the business line ID and billing calls back to the office.

- Centralized Operations: Since VOIP Hosted PBX service integrates all business locations and remote employees together under one cohesive system, if a business has an office in an area affected by a disaster, they can easily direct one of the other office locations to handle all calls being made to the affected location. One receptionist can answer and transfer calls for all company locations.

Bill Casey is the Vice President of Marketing for Reignmaker Communications, Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Reignmaker offers REIGN-FREE Hosted PBX service in 218 markets, covering more than 45 million U.S. households in 35 states. Bill may be contacted at 1-877-VOIP.4U2. http://www.reignmaker.net