OF ALL the equipment in their offices, insurance agents probably use their telephone systems the most and think about them the least. As long as you can reach the people you want to call and they can reach you, the phone system doesn't get much attention. But maybe it should. The systems have evolved, and today's systems can change the way we think about phone service.

One of the biggest developments is Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, which allows phone calls through the Internet. By itself, VoIP might not seem to offer an advantage over using a conventional telephone line. But after I researched the system's potential, we purchased one immediately.

A VoIP phone system connects all of the phone extensions in an office to an electronic server that is controlled by a PC, as part of a network-much like the office's workstations are networked through a server for data communication. Telephones at an agency's multiple office locations can be connected to the network regardless of their distance from one another-they are integrated as if they were phone lines in the same office. Thus a call from one office to another would be just like a call to an office extension, meaning that long-distance charges would no longer apply, even for offices in another area code. (You would need to identify each office with a “prefix” number, such as 1, 2, or 3, before dialing an extension number.)