- Jan 15, 2001
- 15,069
- 94
- 91
I'm thinking about switching to a cloud based PBX system at my office. I've been using a T1, which has dedicated bandwidth for voice and the rest is for data. I would have rid myself of this nightmare years ago if it wasn't for the contract. That's up in 3 weeks, so I'm shopping around.
Here are some of my options:
1) Cbeyond 10/10 fiber for $609/mo + $30/mo for conference calling and a bunch of other phone features. On top of that, the cloud based PBX host is $20/channel and I need 6 channels, so add another $120. Before tax, that's ~$759/mo. They also provide as many DIDs as I want and they're willing to give me a month of free service if I renew my contract with them (the old contract was 2x T1 for basically the same price - ugh).
2) Time Warner Cable 10/10 fiber is $614/mo, but it lacks many of the other features that Cbeyond provides with their T1 solution (e.g., analog ports for a fax machine - ugh, but I need it - free DIDs up to 200). I can get all of the same services using third party vendors like RingCentral (mostly everything is related to phones, which is the point of this post), but that seems like a pain and they charge $5/DID, which will be very expensive unless we move to an extension system instead of direct dialing (do not want).
Here's my real question: do you have any experience with SIP phones in a business environment? I could go with TWC 35/5 cable instead of 10/10 fiber for $300/mo + all of the phone crap, which will be way less. I could even go lower than that by going with 15/2 or 10/2 cable connections, but I don't know how reliable it will be regarding phone traffic. Cbeyond uses QoS to ensure call quality, but TWC doesn't support that because they want me to host my own PBX using their phone services, which is fucking ridiculous and not going to happen.
The attraction to TWC is the much lower price tag for internet service, but the risks are call quality and complexity by moving to a two vendor model instead of just one. Would you use a regular, non-QoS internet connection for 6 SIP channels? Googling told me each SIP channel should need ~60 Kbps of bandwidth, so surely it won't be a problem, but who knows.
Here are some of my options:
1) Cbeyond 10/10 fiber for $609/mo + $30/mo for conference calling and a bunch of other phone features. On top of that, the cloud based PBX host is $20/channel and I need 6 channels, so add another $120. Before tax, that's ~$759/mo. They also provide as many DIDs as I want and they're willing to give me a month of free service if I renew my contract with them (the old contract was 2x T1 for basically the same price - ugh).
2) Time Warner Cable 10/10 fiber is $614/mo, but it lacks many of the other features that Cbeyond provides with their T1 solution (e.g., analog ports for a fax machine - ugh, but I need it - free DIDs up to 200). I can get all of the same services using third party vendors like RingCentral (mostly everything is related to phones, which is the point of this post), but that seems like a pain and they charge $5/DID, which will be very expensive unless we move to an extension system instead of direct dialing (do not want).
Here's my real question: do you have any experience with SIP phones in a business environment? I could go with TWC 35/5 cable instead of 10/10 fiber for $300/mo + all of the phone crap, which will be way less. I could even go lower than that by going with 15/2 or 10/2 cable connections, but I don't know how reliable it will be regarding phone traffic. Cbeyond uses QoS to ensure call quality, but TWC doesn't support that because they want me to host my own PBX using their phone services, which is fucking ridiculous and not going to happen.
The attraction to TWC is the much lower price tag for internet service, but the risks are call quality and complexity by moving to a two vendor model instead of just one. Would you use a regular, non-QoS internet connection for 6 SIP channels? Googling told me each SIP channel should need ~60 Kbps of bandwidth, so surely it won't be a problem, but who knows.