Skype phone system @ work not working that well, Will it with t1?

[logi]

We are trying to use a Skype phone system via our computers at our new office. We are doing it this way because we need to keep the initial and monthly cost as low as possible. It is just not working right now as sometimes the calls do not go through at all or they just drop out.
We have skype with the Pretty May software as our PBX. The problem seems to be our internet speed. We have Qwest dsl 600/260 with clearwire 1500+/100 hooked up together via a duolinks sw24 syswan.
The phone quality is only good when few are on the computer. We have around 10 people now that will be using the internet to check email and run quotes. We plan on having another 10 by the end of the year.

Here are some speed tests that I ran throughout the day:
1. 2500/168
2. 2000/35
3. 500/260
4. 576/208
5. 561/209
When we set up the duo wan we saw numbers like 2500/500

It seems according to the numbers that the clearwire was working on the first two tests but not the others, it has the fastest download 1500+ on average but poor upload.

We can buy a T1 line at 1500/1500 for $350 per month. Will this solve our problem and be enough for what we need?
If we sign up for T1 we are locked into a three year contract. I would only want to do that if it worked.
PBX phone systems are pretty expensive and then we would have to pay around $35 per line.

Is there a better way?

 

[pm]

Buy a router with quality of service - and then prioritize Skype on it. A cheap Linksys WGT54GL running Tomato (http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato)) does this well enough for under $50. This should solve the Skype problem - email will be slow, but Skype should be ok. I'd probably choose to pair two DSL's together instead of a T1. Tomato is a beautiful thing - it enables high-grade router features to be run on a cheap low-end router... like the WGT54GL.

For the PBX, buy a small cheap computer - even one of the new cheap Atom-based systems will work - and then run Trixbox (Asterisk@Home) on it for the PBX. http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/

Asterisk makes a very clean, fairly straightforward, very cheap PBX. I've used it in a small business environment and it absolutely rocks. And it integrates directly to Skype: http://share.skype.com/sites/e...for_asterisk_beta.html

You will want to read a bit on PBX's to be able to set it up - but the whole thing isn't really that hard and it works beautifully when you get it set up... and it's free apart from set up costs. Anything higher than about a 2GHz Pentium 4 should run Asterisk well enough for 10+ people.

 

[logi]

Thank You, Those are some great ideas. I will get to work on them.