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A recent survey conducted by Emprix revealed that more than one third of all VoIP service providers, which includes Hosted PBX ыervice, are unable to recognize they have a service quality problem until a customer complaint is received.

In a world where mission critical business applications routinely flow through data networks, it is distressing that no monitoring capability exists for many service providers of our newest and best technology. In the enterprise market, the financial viability of a business can very well depend on a vendor’s technical strength and on their capability to proactively monitor and fix problems before the end user is affected.

Before selecting a vendor for your VoIP Hosted PBX service make sure they are equipped with the proper Network Management System (NMS) for their VoIP deployments, one that allows their Network Operations and Field Technicians to identify and troubleshoot VoIP problems without relying upon a complaint from you to trigger an action on their part.

Your Hosted PBX provider should have the capability to proactively monitor detailed call quality statistics including MOS, jitter, latency, and other measurements. State-of-the-Art network monitoring systems have advanced diagnostics linked to an online knowledgebases that automatically provide network technicians with troubleshooting tips. This capability dramatically reduces the effort and time required to identify the root cause of poor quality calls, and more importantly it reduces the time that your business is affected by the trouble.

Their system should also incorporate trend analysis and pro-active notification of poor VoIP call performance so that the network technician is able to identify and resolve issues that would otherwise impact VoIP service delivery to your business. With the proper network management system, in the event that you do have a problem, it is likely that the trouble can be rectified remotely rather than waiting for a time-consuming truckroll.

When you are in the process of evaluating Hosted PBX service offerings, make sure that your evaluation criteria is heavily weighted to include the vendor's network monitoring capabilities, and that they have the proper tools to effectively measure, monitor and manage all of their VoIP endpoints.

Whatever you do, don't buy VoIP service from a "blind" provider.

By Bill Casey