What is "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) VoIP?

A lot of us (those of us who are at least 21, anyway) are fans of hosting parties that say “bring your own beer,” because the pressure is taken off us to provide the libations for the Sunday football game. This isn’t such a great prospect for the partygoer, of course, who is forced to essentially pay for their own drinks to attend a party.

That’s not how it works in VoIP. Bring Your Own Device VoIP often helps the person bringing the device by saving them money on hardware they don’t have to buy from their new VoIP provider. Are we getting ahead of you yet?

If so, keep on reading and you’ll know exactly how a Bring Your Own Device program can save you and your company a nice chunk of change.

What Does it Mean?

Let’s say you’re about to sign up to a VoIP plan for your business and you’re excited about how easy it will make your phone systems. That’s great – but you realize that something’s missing: the actual phone hardware from which you plan on making your company calls.

Many VoIP providers are aware of this problem and will eagerly sell you some great phone hardware that’s compatible with VoIP systems. But many VoIP providers will let you use whatever SIP-ready device you have for their services. You are, essentially, bringing your own device, making the acronym BYOD more than adequate to explain the terminology.

Who Offers BYOD VoIP?

A vast majority of honest, top-tier VoIP providers should have a BYOD program that you can use, sometimes at very little cost to have set up. Services like CallCentric, Skype, and VoIP.com are all BYOD-enabled, allowing you to use the hardware you already have on hand to handle your voice and communication issues at your company.

To say that this allows you to reduce a lot of overhead is an understatement. Essentially, BYOD VoIP means that you can have cheap-to-setup, low-monthly phone services that still make your company a professional one…but without the professional prices. In this economy, it doesn’t get much better than that.