Keeping VoIP phones working during an internet outage

What callers experience

It depends on your provider. Some send calls straight to voicemail when your phones go offline. Some keep ringing with nobody to answer. A good setup does neither: it forwards calls somewhere useful automatically.

Option one: forward calls when the phones go offline

Nearly every business VoIP service, including RingCentral, Nextiva, 8x8, Weave and others, can forward calls when your desk phones lose their connection. The setting usually has a name like "failover forwarding", "business continuity" or "forward when offline". Point it at a manager's cell phone or a call group.

1. Log into your phone system's admin portal or app.
2. Find the continuity or offline forwarding setting for your main number and key extensions.
3. Choose who receives the calls during an outage.
4. Test it: unplug a desk phone and call in.

The limits of forwarding

Forwarding keeps calls coming in, but staff lose everything else: desk phones, transfers, hold queues, call recording, the front desk's ability to see who's calling. For a busy front desk, forwarding everything to one cell phone gets overwhelming fast.

Option two: keep the phones themselves online

With a cellular backup connection, desk phones never notice the outage. The router switches to cellular within seconds, the phones stay registered, and calls, transfers and voicemail work normally.

Calls use roughly one megabyte per minute, depending on the system. A 20 GB plan covers a lot of talk time alongside payments and other business systems. Offices that are on the phone all day should look at 50 GB.

Give voice priority on the backup

If your router supports quality of service or traffic priority, put phone traffic first on the backup line. It keeps calls clear even when other devices are busy, and it costs nothing to set up.

Do both

The safest setup uses both: cellular backup so the phones stay up through ordinary outages, and offline forwarding as the last line of defense if both connections fail, for example in a long power cut. FAILOVER5 plans start at $88 a month, month to month, on Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile.

A note about 911

Internet phones send 911 calls with the address registered on your account, not the location of the connection. That registered address doesn't change when your router switches to cellular, so 911 calls from your desk phones still show your business address during an outage.

It's worth confirming that every phone and location has the right registered address in your phone system, backup or no backup. Phones that move between buildings or locations need special attention.

Backup internet for

• Medical clinics
• Dental offices
• Law and accounting offices