


Furthermore, there are certain phone types which are intended to be used with both landline and VoIP purposes to begin with, such as the ones manufactured by Freetalk. Skype, Google VoiceĮven though both Skype and Google Voice/Hangouts are mostly computer-based VoIP services, they can indeed be used with landline phones. Keep in mind, however, that even simple voicemail/call notifications are turned into analog signals, meaning that they are not displayed on your phone’s screen like on IP devices. There are also ATAs with USB ports that directly connect to your computer, further simplifying the setup. Once this last step is done, you can start using your old phones/fax machines like you did before moving to the clouds. Then you need to configure the settings using a web interface to integrate the adapter into your system however, if you purchase such device via a phone service provider, ATAs arrive pre-configured, so configuring is reduced to “plug-and-play”. Setting up such a device is just as simple as the brief description above: you have to plug in the jack of your old phone into the adapter and connect the adapter to the internet directly or via a router. However, if you are more into technical details, you only need to know that the ATA is a bridge that transforms the analog signals of your old phones to digital data and vice versa. To tell a short story even shorter: you plug in the adapter to hook up the internet to your old phones, do some minor configurations and it’s done. Let’s take a look at some of your options and a selection of the most suitable VoIP phone adapters to complete your setup.

All in all there’s little to it, and there are various ways to complete the setup using a router and existing VoIP subscriptions. This means two things: you either have to purchase new IP phones/rely on softphones and mobile devices, or you need an analog phone adapter (or ATA for short), which connects old desk phones to your VoIP system. However, clients often forget about the fact that most of the phones they are using connect to the system via phone cables VoIP on the other hand uses internet cables. Aside from being more technologically advanced, the main reason behind turning your phone system into a cloud-based one is to save maintenance costs and reduce call rates.
