Tuesday, July 17th, 2012 at 2:58 PM EST

This just in from across the pond (that’s the Atlantic Ocean, in case anyone didn’t know): VoIP saves businesses money. That’s hardly news to most VoIP users, but quantifying just how much businesses are saving can be challenging.

U.K. VoIP provider Telappliant, whose target market of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is highly similar to the market served here in the colonies by Phone.com, surveyed 175 of its U.K.-based business VoIP users. The survey showed that almost a quarter of businesses (23%) were saving more than 60% of their annual telephony costs. Almost a third of businesses (27%) were saving between 41% – 60%, whilst over a third of businesses (33%) were saving between 10% – 40%.

The survey also revealed that while 70% of the businesses switched to VoIP in order to save money, the cost savings was not the only reason. Other major reasons to use VoIP cited by businesses included the ability to enable staff to work remotely (37%), improved operational efficiencies (33%) and to improve customer care and call center support (15%). Also cited was the ability for a business to have a phone number from a geographic location other than where they are actually located.

It doesn’t take much imagination to map the more than 50 features offered by Phone.com on its business plans – at no extra charge over the base cost – to those tasks of remote work, operational efficiencies, and improved customer care and call center support. And of course Phone.com lets you choose numbers from just about any place in the U.S. plus a host of places internationally. Indeed for my own business, as well as personal, needs I use a bunch of those features such as follow me, remote work, and the ability to place extensions almost any place in the world.

Stuart Zipper is currently a contributing editor to Communications Technology, a high tech business journalism consultant and freelancer, and the past Senior Editor of TelecomWeb news break.