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

theNEOone

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2001
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our phone bills are close to $3500 between our three locations (small offices, 18 lines at main, 8 lines and 5 lines at smaller branches). voIP could significantly lower our phone bills, plus allow 4 digit dialing between branches. it also offers some cool features.

however, i'm concerned about the viability of voip. how resilient is vonage or other companies? one day w/o phones is suicide, so i have to be absolutely certain that we won't lose service.


=|
 
Aug 26, 2004
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i wouldnt yet...imho the technology is a bit too new to just abandon my telephone service...if the phone wasnt mission critical i would be much more likely to do it

just my two cents
 

Mr N8

Diamond Member
Dec 3, 2001
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You're probably looking at a Cisco or Avaya solution for that. You have to upgrade or replace your PBX, possible upgrade your data lines, upgrade all the phones.... I don't think the cost of doing the project would be worth the return.
 

theNEOone

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2001
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i actually haven't checked out cisco or avaya, but according to our phone system contact we would need minimal upgrades to be voIP compatible.

our bandwidth is just business standard DSL, 3mb/384kb for $80 a month. i was told that we might have to upgrade our upload speeds - 784kb up would be about $220.


=|
 

PlatinumGold

Lifer
Aug 11, 2000
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talk to some phone guys. i got a guy i work with that could probably save you a lot of money using POTS. VOIP is not ready for mission critical applications. my brother got a VOIP setup for his practice and it only works half the time. fortunately he kept about 8 lines of POTS and that's what keeps his business going.
 

jjessico

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May 29, 2002
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What I would do is go VOIP for internal calls, but send all calls destined for the PSTN out through a PRI at the office that you can get the best rate on a T1 local-loop from the phone company.

I can draw a diagram and explain more if necessary. It is possible to make VOIP save you a lot of money and still get the same service level.
 

theNEOone

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2001
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i'm just a finance guy here, fellows. i'm looking to save some bucks here - you know, increase our bottom line.............i have no idea what PSTN or PRI are.


=|
 

jjessico

Senior member
May 29, 2002
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Sorry. I figured you were looking for advice on how to do it.

The only way to answer you question about saving money would be to get all the details about each location and then cook up a cost analysis.

There are a ton of variables depending on how you want it all to work. Best bet might be to find someone in your city who specializes in VOIP to work on a cost model for you to see if it would be worth it. Depending on where you are at I might be able to recommend someone for you.

-Jason
 

jjessico

Senior member
May 29, 2002
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...unless your company has a good IT guy, then your best bet is to tell him to put a proposal together.

And get it on your desk by Thursday morning, or else.....(put in a random threat here).
 

pulse8

Lifer
May 3, 2000
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Originally posted by: quakefiend420
i wouldnt yet...imho the technology is a bit too new to just abandon my telephone service...if the phone wasnt mission critical i would be much more likely to do it

just my two cents

voIP has been around for probably 6 or 7 years already.
 

jjessico

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May 29, 2002
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The problem with VOIP is that unless you can control the path that your VOIP packets travel you can't guarantee reliability. That is why you have to limit the scope of most VOIP rollouts and then switch VOIP calls back to the Public Switched Telephone Network at a convenient border.
 

randomlinh

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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i'd hold off, unless you had an extremely reliable backbone, and lots of testing. we use avaya at work, but I work at a university, so ... heh. actually, we have an extremely reliable backbone... converting student housing to VOIP would be awesome....
 

phreakah

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Feb 9, 2002
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Originally posted by: theNEOone
i'm just a finance guy here, fellows. i'm looking to save some bucks here - you know, increase our bottom line.............i have no idea what PSTN or PRI are.


=|



I am in the exact same situation as you are... our phone bills look pretty ridiculous compared to the prices of VOIP services... and my boss is friends with this guy who is a salesman for a voip company... so i get pressure from him to switch over.

I'm just the financial guy, like you are, who would really like to save us some money... but last year i saved us about 8k/year on phone bills by switching to a provider and they totally fvcked things up.. we didnt have more than two phone lines for about 2 weeks... i don't want something like that to happen again
 

Kelemvor

Lifer
May 23, 2002
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We have IP phones in our etremely HUGE corporation and they work great. I don't know who's handling it behind the scenes though but that's all we give out now to new people are IP phones.
 

imported_Geekking

Junior Member
Jan 23, 2005
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If I was in a small business and I was looking for a place to save some money then definitely I would consider VOIP. I have been very happy with ATT CV so far. It will save you lots of $$$, but as others say it is not 100% reliable. So if you are concerned about it always working then there may be some problems, although I have never had a problem since I have had mine in over 2 months.
 

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Lifer
Aug 11, 2000
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Originally posted by: FrankyJunior
We have IP phones in our etremely HUGE corporation and they work great. I don't know who's handling it behind the scenes though but that's all we give out now to new people are IP phones.

VOIP is acceptable if you have really good connectivity. T1 minimum. but DSL will not cut it for VOIP
 

Rogue

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Jan 28, 2000
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I sure as hell wouldn't do it over DSL lines, that's for sure. Leased lines, maybe, but DSL, not a chance, not for a business that lives or dies by phone.

I'm curious to know why cell phone providers haven't made desktop style wireless phone though. I'd get rid of my home POTS phone if Sprint would release a wall mount, normal size wireless phone for use at home.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
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At that point I'd look at a *real* VOIP product from Nortel/Avaya/Ect.

I would not trust it to a consumer product like Vonage/packet8/ect. But that's just a personal preference that I've voiced before. All this would do though is allow toll bypass intra-office and the ability to pull a dial tone and make calls local to your branch offices.

It's a pretty big upgrade though - easily a six digit project depending on the number of phones you are looking to put in.
 

GeekDrew

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2000
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For those that don't know a lot on the subject - you might want to realize that there are two different realms being discussed in this thread.

The OP asked about VOIP as a backbone for his phone system - which I personally believe to be a terrible idea at this time, unless implemented by a non-consumer corporation, with a reliability guarantee.... and maybe not even then.

A lot of you are talking about VOIP for internal communication, though. That's an entirely different can of worms - which may or may not make sense for this company. Logic would dictate that they already have a PBX in place... assuming it is serving their needs, I see no reason that they would benefit from using VOIP telecommunication equipment internally, except for possibly the reduced infrastructure costs, if they were to place the voice communication traffic on the same switched network as their data traffic - then there is the possible for a nice amount of savings, especially if expansion will be key in the future. That saving would recoup itself in the long term, though - it certainly would not save anything immediately. Most companies that are using VOIP are using this - they implement VOIP internally, while they still use traditional telco services on the other side of the demarcation point - such as a T1, or multiples of single analog circuits, etc.

At my last job, I managed a 3Com NBX 100 system (VOIP PBX) at one location, and a Nortel Norstar (Traditional Switched Circuit PBX) at one location. The location that had implemented the VOIP system was FAR easier to manage. The voice traffic was running on the already existant data network - no infrastructure additions were needed when we moved from a legacy PBX to the NBX - we happened to have a network drop (read: computer) at each location that was to have a phone. As long as we got a network drop there, the phone system could talk to it. I had no issues with reliability of the system internally (except for administrator error when initially implementing it, but that is no fault of the product) - it has performed extremely reliably. We had over 100 internal extensions, not including 3 or 4 fax machines and other analog devices (which we also attached to the network, through an analog terminal adapter).

Externally, we had a T1 for most of our voice traffic (utilization usually around 50% during business hours, but during emergencies, becoming fully utilized), as well as other individual analog circuits implemented both as a failsafe / emergency communication circuit, and for devices that had pre-existing circuits (that we simply attached to the NBX). Even when at peak usage, the system had no performance issues (I've heard there were performance issues with older VOIP PBX's when utilization was high). If internal voice communication over IP is in your future, I suggest you contact both your 3Com Rep and your Cisco Rep for a demo of each of their VOIP products - I have had excellent experience with both. The Nortel Norstar system, mentioned earlier, was a PITA to manage, just because of infrastructure issues in a pre-existing environment, and it is just somewhat more of a PITA to manage (the NBX was managed via a web interface to the system; the Norstar was managed by using key sequences typed in on the operator's telephone). The Norstar was my preferred PBX, before internal VOIP started becoming more mainstream and stable. I now greatly prefer the internal VOIP solutions by either 3Com or Cisco.

Since I'm tired, this post may have been as clear as mud. I'll clarify if needed.

<edit>

I should point out that the NBX is able to communicate with other NBX's (or by itself, to other phones) via WAN data links - the building that has the Nortel system, as well as one other, is scheduled to roll over to the 3Com NBX as soon as possible - the equipment is ready to go, just need to roll out the phones and train the users on the new phones... it works excellently as a WAN VOIP communication system. I know that Cisco solutions (and I would imagine all other VOIP PBX's) have the same ability.
 

PlatinumGold

Lifer
Aug 11, 2000
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Originally posted by: Rogue
I sure as hell wouldn't do it over DSL lines, that's for sure. Leased lines, maybe, but DSL, not a chance, not for a business that lives or dies by phone.

I'm curious to know why cell phone providers haven't made desktop style wireless phone though. I'd get rid of my home POTS phone if Sprint would release a wall mount, normal size wireless phone for use at home.

http://www.alternativewireless.com/cell-phone-docking-station/index.html

or

http://www.coolproductz.com/

how about something like this?

the first one is simple, the two in the second link are a bit more sophisticated.
 

gscone

Senior member
Nov 24, 2004
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Check your facts. VoIp has been around since the mid 80's. My first deployment was in 1998.


Originally posted by: quakefiend420
i wouldnt yet...imho the technology is a bit too new to just abandon my telephone service...if the phone wasnt mission critical i would be much more likely to do it

just my two cents

 

Sketcher

Platinum Member
Aug 15, 2001
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Read up on what jjessico and GeekDrew have posted.

Good information there. An underlying theme in VOIP internal is that unless you have staff or a top notch and always available outsource staff to maintain it, any few and far between glitches will be experienced as significant issues. Your VOIP system internal or externally configured is only as good as your support staff (and the bandwidth, line stability of your network).

I work closely with a couple wiring and telephone system companies who've installed VOIP internal/external for a few years. Their happy customers have IT Staff who also maintain the phone system or they are customers who can handle being down until service calls are dispatched.

In the very least, it sounds like a Business Telephone systems review is in order. Any time you're plunking a chunk of change such as you are into services that can be purchased elsewhere and or replaced with technology you have leverage in negotiating down your costs. (Don't confuse a telephone systems review with those cold call consulting groups who offer to evaluate your services - contacting services providers directly is all you need to do).

* Start with an aggressive business telephone systems/rates review and have alternative quotes rate on POTS services. They'll need to know locations/countries/minutes in order to quote and let them all know their bid is one of three being received. You might find that reduced rates are enough of a savings to stave off a technology jump for the time being. Then again, the results could shore up the motivation for incrementing your technology infrastructure.

Originally posted by: gscone
Check your facts. VoIp has been around since the mid 80's. My first deployment was in 1998.
"been around" and a viable cost effective and reliable alternative to POTS for any given situation are two different things. As a mainstream business product it IS in its' infancy, but it's growing fast and it's getting better very quickly.