Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Unfortunately, if you have a contract with a carrier, there will usually be a penalty for breaking that contract. Most providers ask for a 24-month contract, with a fee for terminating early. This fee typically ranges anywhere from $175 to $350 and often goes down by $5 for each month you have already fulfilled the contract.

The G in these terms stands for generation, and it refers to the generation of mobile technology that your digital signals are using to communicate. 4G is the current standard when it comes to mobile technology, but digital systems are evolving fast. In fact, LTE stands for Long-Term Evolution, which is the next level of 4G. 5G represents the upcoming fifth generation, which is predicted to be even faster than LTE, with lower latency, allowing much faster uploads and downloads and giving the Internet of Things (IoT) even greater potential.

Hosted PBX is the way we refer to the traditional landline type of system when it is integrated into a business platform. PBX refers to Private Branch Exchange, which is the type of hardware you will need for business telecommunications services, such as call transferring.

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. It’s a way to use the internet for unified telecommunications, combining data, voicemail, video conferencing, mobile calling and more in a single, clear platform.

VOIP is simply a matter of having a system in place that routes your voice calls through the same data network you use for internet communications like sending emails or sharing videos. If you have high bandwidth and faster internet, this means calls that go through faster and more clearly without driving up costs.

Since VOIP works on your current IT infrastructure, it is as secure as you make any of your internet communications.

Hosted PBX & VOIP are two very different types of phone systems. The truth is that hosted PBX is a more outmoded system. Communicating over the internet rather than landlines gives you much more flexibility and may be cheaper once you have set it up.

There are a great many advantages to cloud computing for business. Just a few include system scaling, reduced physical data storage needs, greater work flexibility and greater collaboration potential.

Without knowing your specific business, it’s impossible to say how much bandwidth your business needs. It depends on how many employees you have, how many devices are on the network and how regularly the bandwidth is used. If you contact Merlin, we can give you answers tailored to your specific business.

BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, can provide a lot of convenience for both employer and employee, but also many risks, including data leakage, malicious apps, device infection and personal/business overlap. If you practice BYOD, it’s important that you have very clear protocols in place for how it’s used.