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How Your Business Calling Minutes Are Routed

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How Your Business Calling Minutes Are Routed

Globe - Managing your business calling minutesOne of the most common questions we get at VirtualPBX is this: How are my business calling minutes managed locally and internationally?

Our Essentials, Advanced, and Enterprise Plans come with unlimited local minutes for calls to the contiguous U.S.

International calls are billed at low per-minute rates. Therefore, it’s important for businesses to distinguish when they will make local and international calls.

For all businesses with bases in the U.S. and abroad, their collective question is simply a matter of where the call is routed to, not where its coming from. This brief blog will explain the details.

VirtualPBX Has Worldwide Servers

What you need to know first is that VirtualPBX uses six datacenters to route call traffic – four in the U.S. and two in Europe.

This means is that, when you place a call, it will be routed through the internet from your location to the closest or most logical server.

Four types of routing may take place, depending on where you call from and where you want to reach. A few examples:

  1. You call from Atlanta to San Francisco: The call moves from your Atlanta phone to a VirtualPBX server in the U.S. and then terminates in San Francisco. This is considered a local call.

  2. You call from Mexico City, Mexico to San Francisco: This time, your call moves from Mexico City to a U.S. server and then terminates in San Francisco. This is also considered a local call.

  3. You call from Mexico City to another location in Mexico City: In this case, your call is sent from your location to a U.S. server but is then routed back to Mexico City. This is an international call.

  4. You call from Atlanta to Mexico City: Here, your call reaches a U.S. server when then relays your call to Mexico City. This is an international call.

Your own business calling minutes will reach into one of these categories. The key is determining where your calls terminate.

Where Your Calls Terminate

How do you determine when a call is considered local and not international? Think about where the call ends.

Looking at the examples listed above, you can see that options 1 and 2 are local. Those calls are directed to recipients inside the contiguous U.S.

In examples 3 and 4, although your calls would use a VirtualPBX server in the U.S., you don’t reach a recipient with the U.S. These are considered international calls because your recipients are not considered local with relation to the server that handles the call.

Your Own Business Calling Minutes

If you’re considering VirtualPBX as your phone system provider, think about the recipients of most of your outbound calls.

Do you call mostly to the contiguous U.S.? Great! Those calls will be considered local, and you can benefit from unlimited local minutes in our plans.

Do you call mostly outside the contiguous U.S.? We offer low per-minute rates for all international calls. Our Sales team can provide you with those rates.

Finally, do you mostly make calls within your own business? Excellent! You can make unlimited calls between system users, on any of our plans, for no extra charge.

Use of your business calling minutes may fluctuate and shift between different areas of your plan. All businesses have different calling needs, so we’re happy to discuss your situation and find a VirtualPBX plan that best suits the types of calls you expect to complete.

Don’t forget our July 2019 Sale that will save you $2-5 per user, for the life of your plan, when you sign up before midnight on July 31. We hope you’ll join us soon.

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