VOIP Telephones - Your thoughts 6

[desertinn]

What do you guys think about the new VOIP style telephone sets. For example the CISCO unit. I was at a business and I liked the looks of it butthere seems to be a lot of scrolling thru the meanus to find features.

Also, the biggest concern is that I notice that it was running pretty hot. The display was very brilliant ad there was even the company logo on the display.

I was wondering with it running so hot will the screens on these types of sets start to etch or even burn out or will these untis burn out etc.

I have not installed any of these yet. I do not like all the extra cabling pairs required. I mean we have gone down to a single cable pair and not were are heading back in the other direction.

What do you guys think and what is your experience with these types of sets? Repai issues, training issues. Do customers find them easy to use? Etc.

 

[Sympology]

Not sure you understand the way the phones work.
Yes lots of menus, but that's because there are a thousand more options.
I don't use Cisco (to expensive and to much proprietry crap), so we use Aastras.
I'll point out the pro's.

1. Office move. Pick up. Move. Done. Seriously. I can take a phone from one office, move it to another part of the country, plug it in and it's up and running in a few minutes. We completed an office "shuffle" a few weeks ago and took us 4 hours. The same move 3 years ago on a meridan took us 2 DAYS (10 hours each), as we have to rewire the whole ruddy lot.
Single wire? You use LESS cabling. You stick it on the same cable as the pc. So 50% less ports used (although in reality you'll still need phones where there are no pcs).
Most phones can easily support mulitple lines, 3 normal, but 9 is not at all uncommon.
The you have thing like directories, redial lists, missed call lists, call screening and on and on.

Add to this the power fo SIP proxies, Media gateways etc etc you can provide a MUCH better service. We're in the process of tying all our branches together to provide free internal and cheap international calling, all over IP. HUGE cost savings.

No one word of waring, if your network is crap, all these lovely features will be utterly useless. So before you spend a penny on a VoIP system, get the network right!


Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[KE407122]

I'll point out the CONS.

Depending on the business, the customers' ability to juggle phones within a building can be a pain. The expression telecommunications management has more in common with herding cats.

Right now with our new IP system they play "musical desks" with the phones because of what I call ring ring envy, closely related to penis envy...someone else's set was bigger and had more buttons.

They move the preferred IP set into their office and can't figure out why the extension they had now works in the other office. Maybe not a problem in some offices but our extension assignments are more a function of the operation and not the individual. Just try and get them to leave them where they are. The worst thing ever invented for the telephone was the modular jack! The best thing Nortel did with the Meridian to prevent the chaos was to disable the digital port when the set was unplugged. The musical desk game stops very quickly!

If we went wireless IP, all the phones will end up in one common area and you'd be hard pressed to find one anywhere else in the building! Much like looking for a T.V. remote. One person suggested a heavy link chain bolting the wireless phone to the desk.

It was always a problem as a field tech to go to the customer's site, troubleshoot the reported digital extension and then after finding absolutely nothing wrong,leave. Only to be called back as they'd moved the problem extension somewhere else. As you say with IP it may end up across the country...aaah progress.






KE407122
'Who is this guy named Lo Cel and why does he keep paging me?'

 

[desertinn]

Just got a call from a client who is so unhappy with his new CISCO IP phones that he he reconnecting his NEC 4 line analog sets.

I tried calling him and got dead air. I tried using the phones and they are really so confusing with all the buttons and slow moving display that even I had trouble understanding how to use it.

I can see how many of my customers would consider them to hard to use.

 

[Sympology]

Yet they use a pc, with 102 keys, unlimted menus and an array of different programs.

A misconfigured Cisco is no different to an misconfiured analogue, well that's not true, if one of our phones is not getting called, we check A) to see if it's registered to the phone, B) the very extensive & detailed call logs.
Unfortuntly cant help when some ******** has turned the volume down.
As for phone envy. Standard set up.
All sites currently a 9133is'. New sites are getting the 6753i. That's it.
No pretty ones for "important" people. End of.

As I said and will always say, a crap netowrk will = a crap phone.
The dead air, before or after ringback? Before, simple misconfiure, no different to a misconfigured phone on amay other stations. If after, sounds like a misconfiured firewall not allowing RTP traffic through.
Everysite we've replaced Meridan / Index kit on 99.9% of people prefer the new handsets. The main problem you've mentioned is some pillock hasn't followed the golden rule. KISS.
The keys they need should be obvious, Foward, transfer, hold, hang up, volume up down, directories, redial & missed calls.
Fancy things should be hidden away (even removed). After all it's a phone, not a email system.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[PBXTech]

It was so much easier with single pair digital or analog phones. Moves could still be done by just moving the phone if you knew what features were available to you as an administrator.
With VoIP moves, no knowledge of features needed. You just unplug the phone and plug it where it needs to be. I got wise to individuals moving phones on their own a long time ago. If a VoIP set gets unplugged, I get an email.

The thing about saving money with VoIP...
It’s not the phones in the building that save a lot of money. It's connecting the gateways/servers/etc with IP Trunking so that calls that need to go to another office across the State, Country or around the Globe get routed on your data network rather than using a voice T1 that would cost you a long distance charge.

 

[fieryhail]

In response to the OP, I use an older Cisco IP Phone on my desk, 7970G and it has a color display, 8 line buttons etc. Yes, there are lots of menus, but depending on how many services you have setup for the phone to use, there can be more or less scrolling through menus. Also, as someone else mentioned, just because features ARE available on the phone, doesn't mean i configure all of them for everyone. Different people have different needs. A properly designed softkey template for different groups of users limits the need to go through many menus, everything is available where it's intuitive. I've used various different IP Phones with Asterisk based IP PBXs (including Cisco ones) and I still prefer the Cisco phones to others. Yes, they cost, but I believe you do end up getting what you pay for. Cisco has also gotten much better with licensing in their most current release of CallManager, 8.x. Also in regards to cabling, 2 cables, one for the phone and power (PoE) and the PC plugs into the phone's switchport, end of story.

As to VoIP vs. traditional, I like VoIP. Cost savings are huge when compared to traditional TDM, we've just been getting into SIP as well and have been overall very pleased. As with ANYTHING including "IP", it's all about the network. Properly designed network = excellent VoIP experience. Just my thoughts...

 

[OzzieGeorge]

The biggest problem I forsee with voip is that in the past, if you gave someone a feature phone, it would only work when attached to the PBX. Just wait till people realise that they can go sip at home and take that nice feature phone home! I was involved with an upgrade on a hybrid system where thre was a change to 5 digit numbering. This involved logging the voip phones off then back on with the new number. Finding the phones was a real pain and the one that had made it overseas never did turn up again!

 

[fieryhail]

With the ASA UC Phone Proxy, it's now easy to bring a Cisco IP Phone home and cnnect to the CallManager in the office. all encryprted too! A very nice tool to extend the office phone system to remote locations without having to configure VPN and the like. Plug the IP Phone in to a regular residential switch, and go!

 

[Westi]

VoIP is no good over the Internet if you are honest because the speed is not consistent even though it will probably work well 9 out of 10 times it will cr@p out on you as soon as you talk to your most important client and you have to call them back on a different connection.
digital phones = a little bit more work to move if you don't have Nortel "set relocation"
IP phones = mor money on the switches because you need a good network and can't operate off a hub in the corner any more like some people believe. Also more work to setup the network initially because you need to VLAN the network and you need to have someone do it that understands the VoIP functions and programs the switches with QoS.

a crap network will = a crap phone

In short if you have all the wiring in place for digital phones use it, if you build a new infrastructure then might as well go with IP phones.

Joe W.

FHandw., ACSS

 

[Dexman]

VoIP does have its place. But, as noted earlier on, much of it has to do with the network. If you have a company with locations "here there and everywhere" then sending calls between locations over an IP network can be a plus.

But if you look at a "mom & pop store" situation with maybe a few locations in close proximity that all use DSL rather than a T1 or larger circuit connected to a dedicated service provider, then the need for VoIP diminishes.

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[GordonKapesMZ4]

I've discovered some interesting voip positive perks this weekend.

I took a SIP enabled Nortel 1120E down to a friend I was visiting in Indy this weekend and plugged it into his router and the phone worked excellent. It operated like it was in my lab in my home office 200 miles North.

I took it a step further, testing it out for the upcoming summer vacations in the North Woods of Michigan. I bought a Wireless signal extender from Netgear, paired it up with a laptop, and I was able to log the IP phone onto the wireless network. This will come in use when I stay at a cabin with Wifi for the resort, but not a dedicated router connection in each cabin, this upcoming summer.

Even with a small business, you can look like a big business with IP phones on the desks of your users or shopkeepers. To the customer, they don't know if the Nortel phones are connected to a CS1000, BCM or 3rd Party SIP provider. Keep in mind though, with the Nortel phones, SIP firmware 2.2 is the only freeware still available....3.0 and 4.0 require an annoying, aggravating License Token.

 

[oldestgeek]

There are legitimate reasons to go VoIP and reasons to stay TDM. Each situation/customer is different so you can't just throw out a blanket satement to cover every situation. Before maling a change to a VoIP system analyze the costs involved which may include data network upgrades, cabling upgrades, licensing fees, and often more expensive sets. These costs often, but not always are offset by productivity gains, easier personell relocation, and lower system hardware costs. Make sure you read a few white papers from different sources, not just the manufacturers and vendors before making your decision.

 

[desertinn]

How about topll abuse if a set is stolen and not missed. I have a client that got hit with a 74,000.00 bill for overseas calls.

 

[OzzieGeorge]

Most people miss out considering the increased running costs of Voip solutions. I once compared the power useage of a system using Cisco compared to an NEC pabx. The cisco was amazingly more expensive just counting the phone power requirements.

People also forget the cost of maintaining all the extra batteries in the UPSs that they need with a voip solution whereas a TDM solution has central batteries.

 

[Dexman]

It is very true that each customer is different.

VoIP is being marketed as a "be all/end all" solution for every single situation. There aren't too many gas station and corner churches that need a "Cisco solution".

If you have just a few telephone lines and have basic DSL service, a small key system would....most likely....be more than enough.

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[Westi]

I have to think of what our IT guy said to me once.
VoIP is a bad idea because it is forcing the network to do things it was not created to do and that this in return causes him much more work than with a "real" phone system.
But I agree to the consensus that it has it's place for some and not for others.

Joe W.

FHandw., ACSS

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

As far as the small businesses comments on here not benefitting from VOIP, I couldn't disagree more with your comments saying VOIP would not be fitting for them.

Small businesses such as gas stations or corner stores do not have to invest in a whole IP PBX! They can sign up for a SIP provider or even google voice and they get business grade service.

Say they wan't 2 phones and 3 lines. They can go out to Officemax and buy 2 RCA "residental grade" multiline phone for $200 a piece and then pay $150-$200 a month for 3 analog phone lines and DSL service.

If they go with SIP and VOIP services, they can get 3 late model SIP phones such as the Cisco 7960, Nortel 1140E, Polycom for around $200 or less a piece.

Once you have the phones you 2 options. Download a freeware system such as 3CX or PBXES onto your computer in your small shop and connect the phones that way. Your second option is to set up the phones directly with your SIP provider and use the Username and Password from the SIP account to access their network. I use a system called VOIP.MS which allows you to have IVRs, extensions, transfer, hold, conference and many other features, without having to be connected to a KSU.

So to complete the network all the small town shop owner has to do is plug the phones into the router and plug the router into the DSL connection and they now have an IP enabled phone system in their small town gas station, corner store or small business for the fraction of the cost of POTS service. Most SIP providers charge around 1 to 2 cents per minutes on USA and Canada calls, which is a fraction of the cost of Analog POTS lines.

With these particular IP phones set up in a small tourist say....Candy shop in Traverse City, MI for example, you can customize the phones to match the needs of your user, ie. personalized ring tones, button lables, and phone features.....without having to invest in an actual IP PBX or KSU on the site.

Sounds like a win win situation to me.

In fact, I've converted my home office to SIP enabled trunking and I run solely on SIP enabled 1140E Nortel phones running off voip.ms.

Any questions?

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

I also forgot to mention, the one thing you do have to pay "ma bell" aka the landline telephone company for is the DSL or cable modem service.

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

Let me add one more thing.....

Say this small Candy shop wants to have just 1 phone and 1 line. They can buy one SIP phone, DSL service and sign up for a SIP carrier all for about the same price as buying an analog cordless/business phone and POTS phone service.