Toll-free numbers
When a toll-free number helps, and when it makes you sound distant.
Read about toll-free
Business VoIP by state
Business VoIP in Mississippi
For a fair number of Mississippi businesses the right answer to this is not yet, and we would rather open with that than bury it. A phone system that runs over the internet is only ever as good as the line under it. So this page starts with the line, and only then gets to the number, the greeting and what any of it is worth.
Disclosure: AldoMedia is a paid affiliate of Unitel Voice. If you sign up through a link on this page we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend what we would set up for our own clients, and we say plainly below who should not buy this.
Start with the line, not the handset
Voice does not need a fast connection. It needs a steady one. A line that is quick most of the time and stalls for a few seconds now and then is worse on a call than a line that is simply slow, because the stall lands in the middle of somebody's sentence.
Bad connections sound like this to your customer: the first word of a sentence clipped off, a voice going briefly robotic, or a delay long enough that you both keep talking over each other. They do not think that is the internet. They think it is you, and it costs you the call.
So test before you order, not after. Make a video call from where the phone will actually sit, at the hour you are busiest, and watch whether it holds. If it does not, this is a broadband conversation and nothing a phone provider does at their end will change it.
What a local code is worth in a small market
More here than in a big metro, and that is worth saying because most advice about business numbers is written for cities. Where people ask a neighbor who they used, a number that looks like it belongs nearby is doing quiet work for you before anyone picks up.
Numbers in this state include 601 and 769, which sit on the same ground as each other, along with 662 across the north and 228 on the Gulf Coast. Which one you want is not a style decision. It is the one your customers already dial, and it is printed on the bill in your own drawer.
If you have had the same number for years, the answer is easier still: keep it. It is on your sign, your trucks and every invoice you have sent, and moving it to a new provider is a routine request. The two rules that stop that going wrong are on business phone numbers.
When a toll-free number works against you
Most pages treat toll-free as an upgrade. In a lot of Mississippi markets it is the opposite. To somebody in a small town a toll-free number can read as a company that is not from here and may not answer, which is the impression a local business is trying hardest not to give.
It earns its place in three situations: you sell outside the state, buyers compare you against vendors in other places, or you want one number that does not tie you to any one town. Plenty of businesses run a toll-free number and a local one into the same system and let the caller choose. The trade-offs are set out on toll-free numbers.
Storm season, and the rule you set in advance
An honest difference between this and the copper line you may still have: a corded phone on a copper line keeps working in a power cut, because the line carries its own power. VoIP does not. No power means no router, and no router means no phones in the building.
The answer is not dramatic, but it has to exist before you need it. Set a rule that sends calls to a mobile whenever the system cannot answer, on the day you install rather than the morning the lights go out. Anywhere with a storm season has reason to test that rule once in fair weather, so somebody has seen it work.
A plan that assumes the power, the internet and the cell network are all up is not a plan. Decide now which phone the calls land on when they are not.
None of this is Mississippi-specific
Everything above is about the state. The product is not. A VoIP phone system here is the same system sold in Minnesota or Oregon: the same software, the same handsets and apps, the same rules for moving a number, the same behavior in an outage. There is no southern edition, and anyone implying there is has put a state name on a national product.
Which means the questions worth your time are the local ones. Will the line carry a call. Which code reads as home to the people who ring you. What happens when the power is out. The rest is explained once on the main business VoIP guide, and the copper comparison is on VoIP versus landline.
Who should not switch
- Anyone whose connection drops. This is the one that catches businesses here, and it is a hard no rather than a wait and see. A line that is fine for email is not always steady enough for a call. Fix the line first.
- The rest of that list is not a Mississippi list. A fax that carries real work, a contract with time left, the emergency address record and whatever else shares that copper are on the main VoIP guide.
Common questions
Mississippi VoIP questions
My internet drops a few times a week. Should I switch?
No, not yet. A drop that lasts a few seconds is invisible while browsing and takes a sentence out of a phone call, and the caller blames you rather than the connection. Sort the line out first, or keep the phones where they are. That is not the answer a page selling phone service is supposed to give, and it is still the right one.
Will a 601 number sound local in the north of the state?
Not really. Area codes here carry regional recognition, and a caller in the north is used to seeing 662 on things that are near them. If your customers are up there, take a number in the code they already dial. If they are spread across the state, pick the code where the work is heaviest and let the rest go.
What happens to the phones when a storm takes the power out?
They stop, along with the router and everything else on your network. The fix is a forwarding rule set up in advance that sends calls to a mobile whenever the system cannot answer. Arrange it on the day you install. Bear in mind that in a serious storm the mobile network is its own question, so a plan that assumes everything works is not a plan.
Related guides
What to read before you order anything.
Answering from anywhere
The same number ringing a phone in a pocket or on a counter.
How that worksAuto attendant
The recorded greeting that answers, and where each choice goes.
Greetings and extensionsCoverage
A VoIP line runs over the internet, so there is no network to be at the edge of and no corner of the country where the service gets thin. That is why this map has no holes in it. The shading is not signal strength, it is how much has been written down: Mississippi has a guide of its own, and the darker states have a page for one or more of their cities as well.
- States with city pages
- States with a guide of their own
- The state you are reading about
Every state is linked. Business VoIP by state and city lists all fifty of them, and the 80 cities with a page, as ordinary links.
Test the line, then look at the plans
Look at the plans yourself, or tell us what your connection does at the busiest hour and we will tell you whether this is the right time.