Do I need your internet to use your business phone system?

No — Business Voice runs over any internet connection anywhere in New England, and Cloud PBX extensions are $45/mo with taxes and fees included.

This is the part most people miss. You do not need Boston Broadband fiber to move your phones to us. The platform is cloud-based and works over any high-speed connection, which means a business anywhere in New England can change phone systems without changing internet providers first.

$45/mo per extension, taxes and fees included. That last part is the line item most phone quotes hide until the second invoice, so it's worth saying plainly: the $45 is the number. (This is the only Boston Broadband product where "taxes and fees included" applies — internet plans are quoted before taxes and fees.)

• A mobile app and a softphone, so a desk handset is optional.
• Staff working from home keep the same number and the same extension.
• You can keep your existing phone numbers and port them over.

Our voice core — the platform that registers your extensions and switches your calls — is engineered for 99.999% availability, five nines. That is the piece we own and operate end to end, and it is built to a higher standard than our internet network because a phone system that drops is a different kind of problem than a slow download.

Availability at your desk depends on more than our core, and it is not the same number. Calls ride your internet connection, your local network, your power, and your handsets or softphones. Because Business Voice works over any provider's connection, that path is often not even ours. A five-nines core does not turn a single-connection office with no battery backup into a five-nines phone system — the weakest link in front of our platform sets what you actually experience.

So the split is worth stating plainly: 99.999% describes our network core. What reaches your premise depends on the connection and equipment in front of it.

Five nines is a design target, not a service-level agreement. It is the standard we engineer and operate the voice core to — it is not a commitment attached to your account, and there are no service credits tied to it. Enterprise Dedicated Internet Access remains the only Boston Broadband product with a contractual availability commitment, and that one is written contract by contract.

Your phones do not have to go with it. There are two ways to stay reachable, and you can have either or both — it is a configuration choice, not a fixed behavior.

• Failover to the mobile app. Extensions keep ringing on the app over cellular data. The app does not depend on your office connection, so a cut line at the office does not stop calls reaching the people who answer them.
• Forwarding to a cell on registration loss. When a desk phone stops registering with the platform — which is exactly what happens when the office connection drops — calls forward to a mobile number you nominate.

Which one suits you depends on how your team works. A business where everyone already carries the app may need nothing more than the first. A front desk with one published number and a phone that has to be answered is usually better served by the second, pointed at whoever is on duty.

Tell us how you want it configured and we will set it up that way.

If you're locked into an internet contract you can't exit yet, or fiber hasn't reached your building, voice is the piece you can move now. The fiber can follow later.

Call (617) 693-9434 or email [email protected] with how many extensions you need and the numbers you'd want to port.

No setup cost, and no fee to port your numbers. The $45/mo per extension is the whole price. There is no activation charge, no provisioning fee, and no per-number porting fee — bringing your existing numbers over costs nothing. Worth checking against any quote you are comparing us to, because setup and porting charges are where phone quotes usually hide their real cost.

Plan on two to four weeks, and understand that most of that is not the transfer itself.

The actual cutover is fast and the FCC sets the clock on it: a simple port — a single line with nothing unusual attached — must be completed within one business day of a valid request, and a non-simple port within about four business days. Neither of those is where the time goes.

The calendar time goes to getting to a valid request. Your current provider — the losing carrier — has to match what we submit against its own customer service record, line for line, and then issue a firm order commitment: the date it will actually release the numbers. Until that date exists, nobody can promise you one.

What makes a port slow is almost always a mismatch. The business name on the account is not quite the name on the LOA. The suite number is missing. The account number changed when the carrier migrated its billing. Any of these gets the request rejected, and a rejection restarts the clock rather than pausing it. Larger and more complex ports — many lines, several sites, a PRI, hunt groups, toll-free numbers — take longer again, because there is simply more for the losing carrier to validate.

1. A recent bill from your current provider — the most recent one, showing the account exactly as that carrier has it recorded.
2. A signed letter of authorization (LOA) giving us permission to request the numbers on your behalf.

Give us both up front and match the bill exactly, including the legal business name and the full service address with suite or floor. The single best thing you can do to speed up a port is to copy the details off the bill rather than from memory.

Your phones keep working the whole time. Numbers do not go dark while a port is pending. Service moves on the firm order commitment date, and we schedule the cutover with you.

Every extension has a registered address — where emergency services are sent if someone dials 911 from it. It is set when you sign up and you update it yourself in the app. Because an extension travels and a phone line in the wall does not, this is worth understanding properly: see How do I set or update my 911 address? Desk phones: bring your own, or lease from us

You do not have to buy hardware to move your phones. Every extension comes with a mobile app and a softphone, so a desk phone is optional from the start — plenty of businesses run entirely without them now.

If you do want handsets on desks, there are two paths:

• Bring your own. We support modern voice handsets. If you already have phones your staff like, keep them — a phone system change does not have to mean replacing everything on every desk.
• Lease from us. We can lease specific hardware, phones and other equipment alike. Terms and pricing vary with what you need and how many, so equipment is quoted alongside the rest of your setup rather than listed at a flat rate. Lease terms are written into that quote.

If that didn’t work

If calls are dropping or one-way, note the time and the extension and call (617) 693-9434 — for voice problems the timestamp is what lets us find the call.

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Talk to us

Call (617) 693-9434, Monday to Friday 8am–6pm ET, or email [email protected]. We answer within 24 hours, and usually within an hour.

Boston Broadband is a service-area business serving Boston, Brookline and Cambridge, Massachusetts. There is no counter to walk up to — phone, email and your account at myaccount.bostonbroadband.com are the ways in.