Hosted is less than perfect for scenarios of more than approx 5 phones period
we do have 1 customer with the PBX housed in a data centre but the phones connect via a dedicated data link.
if the remote users connect Via a VPN & that is of a good quality then I see no reason why the IPO should not perform at lease as well as a dedicated hosted provider (assuming this is all for 1 client & not multi tenancy type operation in which case forget it)
A Maintenance contract is essential, not a Luxury.
Do things on the cheap & it will cost you dear
We have a customer as well with the system in the data centre and the phones in 2 locations for redundancy with dedicated fiber connection to it. 200 users and SIP trunks working fine but I wouldn't want to pay the monthly bill for the connections.
Joe W.
FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)
"This is the end of the world, make sure to buy your T-shirt before it is too late"
Original expression of my daughter
Sell to whoever wants a connection or a more specific group of small companies renting in the same building?
The latter I've done a couple of times with IPO.
Land lord paid for the system, charging the tenants a small fee per month
Tenants ordered a number to be added to the SIP Trunk.
Provider split the bill per DDI.
Kind regards
Gunnar
______________________________________
Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam
Asterisk is what most hosting companies use. To do it right means you will need to have expert, and I mean EXPERT, knowledge of Linux. You will also need to either purchase or build the feature layer that runs on top of Asterisk. You don;t get much out of the box with Asterisk other than a basic PBX and a UPI.
I have been approached by a number of small customers 3-10 phones for quotes but the IPO just isn't a good fit for businesses that small so I am considering setting up a hosted solution.
To avoid a lot of headaches I want to sell this into the same footprint as my local cable provider (Charter) that offers high-speed Internet, including fiber connections and SIP trunks. I would only sell to customers that had the same Internet service and I would have a fiber connection (50/50Mbs)at my end while the customers would have copper at (60/5Mbs). This should avoid a lot of problems with latency, congestion, jitter, etc...
I would like to use the IPO because then I can sell the hosted solution with a future option to convert hosted customers to premise customers as they grow or as the need arises and they can just keep the same phones. This would make it a safe bet for the customer to go hosted. I think I would have to have a site-to-site VPN with each customer which I don't like but I don't think it would work too well any other way with the IPO. Using the IPO would also give me the opportunity to sell value-added apps like call-accounting, call-recording and call-center that would never be feasible otherwise in a small office. It is difficult enough to just keep all that going straight with the IPO and I don't really want to become an expert on a whole other solution. There are obviously trade-offs.
I'm not looking to be the PBX vendor for the whole world, just my local area.
You're UK based? Isn't this illegal without a govt license on the island?
(600 miles east of you, they hang you by the nuts if you try something like this).
I would never try this with an IPO, nor an Asterix, but something meant for this purpose...£50.000+ Ish
Kind regards
Gunnar
______________________________________
Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam
I believe the CLECs have issues with people reselling their services. Any deal you make with them will cut into your profits. Which BTW will be strained as hosting support is 24x7 and that can get costly. There are many issues and legalities involved in telecom hosting that you don't encounter with say co-location or Web hosting.
I am in the U.S. by the way and I did not plan on reselling the CLEC's sip lines. I planned on the end user purchasing the SIP account and just connecting it to my IPO.
therefore just a lousy excuse for a hosted system
But in some cases a single system in a building can serve the purpose, my doctors office has that, main floor with walk in clinic, x-ray and pharmacy and the other 3 floors with doctors offices for different purposes and all have a single reception. perfect to get appointments for other doctors as they just call them via extension and make an appointment for you and you have to remember only a single number and ask for the right place, or dial their DID.
Joe W.
FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)
"This is the end of the world, make sure to buy your T-shirt before it is too late"
Original expression of my daughter
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