VoIP and Pixie Dust

[PeaveyPhones]

My boss is concerned about us paying .5 a minute for LD when “all around her companies are getting free LD via the internet”. She also wonders why.... I better stop. She's a nice lady. My point is "management" at so many companies is confused by the hype from telecom and networking companies. Talk about yer Pixie Dust! They read an article in the Wall Street Journal, or see an Avaya or an IBM commercial on a Sunday morning and actually believe that you can sit on the beach and magically get to the internet AND the companies LAN via a wireless modem. In a related note one guy wants to know why we have to spend so much money on routers. Hec, he saw one at Kmart for $49, and here we are spending money like drunkin’ sailors on (refurbished) Cisco routers. Of course some of it can be done but the expectations are way out of line.

To my main question. Is there a way to get trunks to a VoIP carrier? Is there such a thing? I could ask our current LD carrier but I expect the answer to be, no. I know Vonage, and others, do it for residential service. Anyone catering to business customers? BTW, we have an Avaya G3r R7, and two BellSouth T1’s for local and two MCI T1’s for LD.

Richard


Richard
"The unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates

 

[MarvO1]

Richard, you are absolutely correct about the "Pixie Dust".
There are some very good players in the VoIP arena,but it seems that lately, everyone is jumping onto the bandwidth wagon with junk that just doesn't perform as expected.
People don't seem to understand that the bandwidth has to already be in place for VoIP to work.
I've been working VoIP for several years now, and it does work, but not if you don't already have the bandwidth problem resolved. No free lunch.

MarvO said it

 

[hdingman]

Of course the hype talks about "free" calls, but study the realities. As MarvO said, bandwidth is an issue and hopping on the internet via DSL or cable is OK for infrequent calls on 1 or 2 phones, but if there's any amount traffic, the calls will crash or go to static. Also, you're competing with any computers accessing the internet for bandwitdh.

Then, there's the cost of the equipment itself. It's not cheap. At a nickel a minute, it takes a lot of nickels to pay for it. And ONE is not enough - unless you're going to connect to a 3rd party service, in which case you'll probably pay 2-3 cents per minute, so your savings are only 2-3 cents instead of a nickel.

Having said that . . .
If, on the other hand, you're talking about a business with two or three buildings, and there are lots of nickels being spent on point-to-point calls constantly throughout the day, VOIP can be EXTREMELY cost-effective! Whether at a nickel a minute, or on leased-pair costs, VOIP as a "tie line" between in-house facilities can save tons of money.

Howard

 

[AdmanOK]

We put in a Cisco CallManager system for seven sites around the US. Our two main sites had their existing T1 connection upgraded to a 4MB ATM link to handle the added voice traffic, but the added benefit was that it is now a bigger data pipe as well. The smaller office are all connected through VPN tunnels over the internet. We make a lot of calls both over the ATM and the VPN and have found the quality to be quite acceptable. The cost of the equipment was quite large, and by time all is said and done, we're probably not saving any money, but we have provided a better network and telephone facilities to all our users, so we come out ahead anyway! Don't know if this is helpful, but it gives you something to think about.

 

[geraldshort]

Vonage and others give you unlimited calling for fixed price and supply a gateway device that could connect to the PBX analog trunks. Unless you have a gazillion minutes of use it is not of value to buy a gateway and buy wholesale minutes. Most of the big guys will be offering a version of Vonage etc soon, so hang tight for the next barrage of questions from your masses!

Gerald

 

[PeaveyPhones]

gerald,
Are you suggesting that a company could connect 24 vonage lines in place of a T1?
Let's see, I have two MCI T's for in and outbound traffic at $3,000 a month. Remove one and replace with 24 vonage lines (use outbound only) at $1,200 a month. Save $300 a month ($3,600 a anually) on the circuit and get lower per minute charges. BUT! Will the quality be there?
Richard

The unexamined life is not worth living; Socrates

 

[geraldshort]

I don't suggest you replace T1's with vonage sevice. I would suggest you evaluate the cost of gateway, facility membership, liabilities and administration for interface with the carriers at carrier neutral facility. whether you will actually be using VOIP will depend on the route, same as now.
If you want to check out some hosted facilities here are a couple:

http://www.ca.ipcb.net/about/softswitchservice.php3

http://www.arbinet.com/

I don't know if they accept non-carriers.
If you are paying 5cpm and you have 2 T1 just for LD you could save a bundle by just some negotiation and have no additional administration!


Gerald

 

[AdmanOK]

Eliminating LD costs is no longer an economical way to justify VOIP. The benefits (fiscal and otherwise) of VOIP come in when you can tie all your sites onto one phone system and can have centralized services that are the same at all locations, and a unified dial plan for all locations. If you have the same phone system everywhere, then you only have to remember how to manage one system.

 

[PeaveyPhones]

As it keeps coming up I'll mention that we do have multiple locations. PPN and Six EPNs in the city using 11 T1s at $225 a month each and one EPN 27 miles away with a span that costs $700 a month. I'm not sure the cost of upgrading my switch to accomadate IP would pay for its self.
Richard

The unexamined life is not worth living; Socrates

 

[PeaveyPhones]

I just realized I'm in the General Telephony area. On an Avaya G3r a PPN (Processor Port Network) is the core of the switch. EPNs (Expansion Port Network) are extension cabinets.

Richard

The unexamined life is not worth living; Socrates

 

[Bo9]

The only place I have actually seen VoIP effectively used to save money is linking locations that already have some type of point to point trunk between them. We already had a T between our two locations so to save the LD charges between locations we use VoIP between the Definity and S8100. It has had no impact on data traffic and quality is good.

 

[PeaveyPhones]

So, I could drop existing voice only T1s, use existing data T1s (provided the bandwitdh is there), but would still have to upgrade my (currently G3r R7) hardware and software.

Richard

The unexamined life is not worth living; Socrates

 

[lopes1211]

If you did a very expensive upgrade to the 8700 from an R, your bearer channels would still be provided via dedicated voice T-1's to the EPN's. Only the call control would travel via ethernet. The only way at this time to send the bearer and signaling to an EPN "like" device is to swap out all of your traditional MCC/SCC EPN's with the newer gateways. The G600 will allow you to use all of your old cards but has no surviveability. The other gateways have optional survivability but you can't reuse any of your old cards. Even worse, it's an all or nothing deal. You can't opt to keep the $225 traditional MCC EPN's and just swap the $700 EPN with a G600. I would wait 6 months before upgrading because I think a better fix is coming soon which will better blend the 2 existing 8700 connectivity methods from a G3R migration.

-CL

 

[geraldshort]

You don't mention if you have a VPN between sites already. Depending on bandwidth available to you between sites, TDMoIP could be of interest. I have not used it, don't know if it is cost effective for you, but it would not require any changes or upgrades to your switches.

http://www.tdmoip.com/

I would be curious how many $ an upgrade to your G3 would be to accomodate IP voice. I have never worked on Legacy PBX gear and am curious on true cost for these options as I have been working with the Altigen IP-PBX family since 1997 and it handles multiswitch VOIP seamlessly,fast and economically.

I am interested to hear the how solutions others have tried actually worked out. That may be another thread I guess.

Gerald

 

[lopes1211]

His existing Platform will do VOIP. The side tracked discussion specifically about remote cabinets is what would require the upgrade (not just dumb tie lines). Point to point VOIP and VOIP via hardphones and softphones is relatively straight forward. Revamping the inter-cabinet connectivity to make many remote buildings function and administer as 1 big PBX like it does today via PPN/EPN connectivity would require a migration to the newer 8700 server platform. It would be about $75K for starters to migrate to the platform. Depending on if he would stay with existing cabinets and TDM inter-cabinet connectivity (+$0), or newer gateways to gain IP inter-cabinet connectivity (+$50K-$150K) depending on the size of the switch and existing hardware.

-CL

 

[PeaveyPhones]

Yes, we do have an existing VPN.
Yes, we have the available bandwidth.
Cost, I'm checkin on that. We are at an old software version (R7). To upgrade to the latest version (hardware and software) like lopes1121 mentioned, would cost $70,000 to start. Don't know what the gateways (which ever version we might use) needed at each end of the circuit would cost.
If I have to keep the existing voice T1s then it makes no sense at all.

Richard

The unexamined life is not worth living; Socrates

 

[AdmanOK]

We had Avaya equipment up until the end of 2002 when we replaced it with a Cisco IP Phone infrastructure because the entire Cisco system was going to cost less than the upgrades to our multiple existing Avaya switches! Avaya was going to charge us many $1000's of dollars just to enable us to use caller id through turning on the PRI RTU!

 

[lopes1211]

Every situation is different and pricing structures vary based on PBX size. I doubt you can replace a 5000 station TDM PBX with another PBX (Cisco or whatever) for less than an upgrade existing hardware to an IP based version of your existing Avaya, Nortel, or whatever. At just $200 per new phone, that would be a million dollars just for the handsets.

-CL

 

[AdmanOK]

The Avaya systems in questions were somewhere in the vicinity of 180 stations total with all sites. It was a Merlin/Magic with ~60 stations, a Definity G3 with ~50 stations, a Definity vsi with ~50 stations and three Partner key systems with ~20 stations between them.