if you had the ability to deploy voIP in a small business environment, would you do it?

[Geekbabe]

If phone access is vital to the business I think you'd be wiser to try to negotiate
a better deal than the one you're getting now.

 

[BeauJangles]

my school just put in a VoIP system last year and it has worked fabulous. Very few problems except 1 3 hr outage.

 

[SBMongoos]

Rogue..

These phones are coming. Check this out:

http://www.uniden.com/productpop/00_productpop.cfm?prd_code=ELBT595

 

[Landroval]

the quality is 10000000x better than a few years back, so if you can get it from a reliable provider I would go for it.

 

[cosine17]

i dont understand the need to buy special phones and buy voip and insane connections for a buisness. if 15 year olds can install and run ventrilo on their cable internet for games why cant companies do it too? its 20 dollars for a decent headset from radioshack and the rest is free. not to mention that a even 30k up cable can handle about 10 people easily.

just seems like a nice way to waste money imo.

 

[jjessico]

Originally posted by: cosine17
i dont understand the need to buy special phones and buy voip and insane connections for a buisness. if 15 year olds can install and run ventrilo on their cable internet for games why cant companies do it too? its 20 dollars for a decent headset from radioshack and the rest is free. not to mention that a even 30k up cable can handle about 10 people easily.

just seems like a nice way to waste money imo.

I'm sure Ventrilo is fine for talking while 15yr olds blast each other in the head with phasers or some such, but that is not a solution for a business.

It's the same reason that you don't find too many medium sized businesses firing up the ol Linksys as their gateway router, instead they use Cisco.

The reason is that a business solution is high availability, extensive support options, and robust in features.

Cheaping out is not the way to go when it comes to business phone service.

 

[torpid]

It doesn't matter how many years a technology has been around if it is still immature. And VoIP is still immature for the most part. Certainly over a random DSL connection. The phone system has been around for much, much longer and though it is somewhat stagnant in technology, it is a tested and mature infrastructure.

 

[jjessico]

There is a better answer than "voip is teh suck" or "voip rocks deploy it on everyone's face".

The bottom line is that, if it were me, I would never send a business phone call across the public internet, because once you are outside the boundaries of the network you control, there is no guarantee on the quality of that call.

The option I find works best for most people is run all internal calls and inter-office calls over VOIP and then switch all other outbound calls over to the PSTN.

 

[jjessico]

Originally posted by: torpid
It doesn't matter how many years a technology has been around if it is still immature. And VoIP is still immature for the most part. Certainly over a random DSL connection. The phone system has been around for much, much longer and though it is somewhat stagnant in technology, it is a tested and mature infrastructure.

Most VOIP protocols are actually fairly robust. The reliability issues come from the inability of most peole to secure reliable end to end connectivity.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: jjessico

Originally posted by: torpid
It doesn't matter how many years a technology has been around if it is still immature. And VoIP is still immature for the most part. Certainly over a random DSL connection. The phone system has been around for much, much longer and though it is somewhat stagnant in technology, it is a tested and mature infrastructure.

Most VOIP protocols are actually fairly robust. The reliability issues come from the inability of most peole to secure reliable end to end connectivity.

Which combined together makes for an immature technology.

 

[jjessico]

Not really. Deployed properly on a LAN, a SIP based, VOIP system will have more features and be cheaper to operate and manage than a traditional PBX.

End-to-end latency of the Internet really has nothing to do with voip technology at all.