Speakeasy launched a campaign designed to show customers just how much they can save by switching to VoIP. With a tagline, "Cut your phone bill - not your morning coffee," Speakeasy is offering a Starbucks gift card to business customers who fax in their phone bill to determine how much they can save by switching to voice over IP services.

In addition to price, advantages of VoIP include increased productivity, improved competitiveness and enhanced functionality. Yet several misconceptions have prevented companies from making the switch:

Myth #1: It's not really going to save much money. Businesses tend to underestimate just how much money they'll save by switching to VoIP - up to 45 percent over traditional phone service. In addition to saving on national and international long distance, companies with Speakeasy's hosted service can significantly reduce costs associated with moving, adding or changing employee phone lines - costs that have historically made up approximately 30 percent of traditional phone bills. Because there is no on-site phone system, businesses can also eliminate costly maintenance fees.

Myth #2: It's too much of a hassle to set up and manage. Speakeasy offers both hosted and integrated voice services. With hosted systems, there is no PBX hardware on site, and therefore nothing for the business to manage. For companies opting for integrated services, they can use their existing phones and PBX, and Speakeasy simply adds its voice over IP lines or trunks to their pre-existing on site phone system. Both allow businesses to realize significant cost savings with minimal set-up hassle and maximum flexibility. In addition, Speakeasy's solution allows small business to take advantage of features usually found only in more expensive systems, such as automated attendant, hunt group and call center routing.

Myth #3: Call clarity is inferior to traditional phone quality. The reality is, not all voice traffic is created equal. Broadband quality directly influences voice quality, with marked differences between consumer-grade broadband and business-class connectivity. Speakeasy provides business-class, voice-optimized broadband, which eliminates data interference when using data and voice on a single line. Prioritizing voice traffic over all other data ensures the highest quality possible.

Myth #4: The technology is still too new. According to Forrester Research, many businesses are still afraid of what they do not know, including how services work, voice quality and how much bandwidth they will consume with VoIP. Yet VoIP has been around since the mid-90s and has come a long way since in terms of technological advances and adoption rate by businesses. In fact, Dell'Oro Group, a marketing research firm, predicted that IP lines will grow to almost 60 percent of small business line shipments by the year 2011, while digital and analog shipments are expected to decline at an average of 10 percent per year. Traditional systems are expected to fair even worse, declining to less than 5 percent of the total market by 2011.

Myth #5: VoIP is just a large business solution and is not necessary for SMBs. According to Forrester Research, 52 percent of small businesses say that providing more mobility for employees is a priority. VoIP offers features unavailable through traditional phone systems that increase mobility, such as Speakeasy's Remote Worker, which allows an individual to use their office phone number and features, including four digit calling and number identification, whether they temporarily work from a client's office, their home or using their cell phone. Other VoIP-specific features, like Find Me/Follow Me, allow employees and customers to route calls made to their office number based on a flexible user-defined set of rules. VoIP technology levels the competitive playing field and provides small businesses the features to provide better customer service, lower operational costs, and deliver more business flexibility to expand and contract according to business needs. VoIP is especially necessary in future-proofing small businesses to avoid being hamstrung by outdated technology.