Area code selection is another special feature of VoIP. It lets you choose the area code of your phone. Let us say you are living in New York and have your Mom in Minneapolis. You can get a VoIP phone with a Minneapolis area code and send the number to her. When she calls that number, she pays local rate for that call which reaches you in New York.

In this way Area Code Selection feature lets you establish virtual presence in other places. which can help you in your business also. This is because if you have a virtual presence in another city, customers from there will be more likely to call you as they have to pay the local rate to make an enquiry or place an order.

The downside of a phone with this feature is that it is not local for where you live. So anybody calling you locally - even your next-door neighbor - will have to pay long distance. Another thing to consider is that if you make a E911 call with this phone, it will not connect directly you with your local PSAP - a great difficulty in case of an emergency.

One way to get around these problems is to have a second VoIP phone with your local area code and use it as your primary phone. Another solution is to get VoIP virtual numbers with your VoIP phone which can work out to be cheaper if you want to have virtual presence in different places.