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.

 

[Dexman]

I wouldn't want to trust any business communication to a service provider that requires you send calls via a public Internet connection.

A direct connection to the provider (T1 or greater) is best. How many small organizations can afford local loop charges?

Can Vonage/Skype/Packet8 and the rest boast 5-9s uptime/reliability? No they can't. No provider like that would make such a claim.

They boast "save money over the telephone company" "be able to read voicemails from a computer or smart phone".

If you have an outage (like Skype did not too long ago) then what? Pull out a cell phone and use that?

We had very few problems with our old POTS lines at home. No problems with modem & fax connections. Analog data transmission over an IP connection is a crap-shoot at best.

That might be acceptable for residential use, but not in a business environment.

Routers & servers are much more likely to need a reboot than a 5E or DMS-100 central office switch.

And....in parts of the country, you can order naked DSL service from "Ma Bell".

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[GordonKapesMZ4]

Mr. Dex,

I think you are confused with the type of VOIP service I am refeering to here. I am talking about PRIVATE SIP trunking.

The services I am refeering to are not Skype, Vonage or Google voice (I did accidentally mention google voice earlier, my mistake). The type of services are Baby Bell services such as AT&T "Business in a Box", Qwest One Flex VOIP service, Verizon IP SIP trunking, Bell SIP trunking, Rogers and newer standalone company private network SIP trunking services such as Broadvox SIP trunking, VOIP.MS from Canada, and Nexvortex.com.

Vonage, Skype and Perfect 8 will not allow you to connect a SIP device directly to a MCS5100, Asterisk or Genband server. Their prices are mainly higher than pure private SIP networks. From experience, I did have Vonage and was very dissapointed with their pricing. I currently have SIP trunking with a private business SIP provider and a few trunks from AT&T business in a box and the calls are 1 to 2 cents a minute and that includes taxes. Between "Ma Bell" business in a box and the private SIP provider, I pay between $30-$40 a month for SIP trunking and $35 for the DSL connection over "Ma Bell." Before I was paying over $200 a month for 3 analog lines. With SIP trunking, I have unlimited lines, as much bandwidth as the phone can hold, or as many lines that the device can support.

Qwest, AT&T, VOIP.MS, Bell, Rogers, etc will allow you to connect to SIP trunking from their companies, mainly operating off of Asterisk and MCS5100 Nortel platforms. The phone basically operates as "SIP Centrex."

I think you may be confusing me for the wrong equipment?

Advantages of SIP trunking providers?
-Instant Caller ID on the Display
-Business grade SIP phones by Nortel 11xx and 12xx series, Avaya 9630, Cisco 79XX and 96XX series that directly connect to the private network via Username and Password SIP/IAX
-Take advantage of "Ma Bell" trunking on MCS5100 IP Centrex features without having to buy hardlined expensive Meridian Digital Centrex.
-MADN Multiple Apperance Directory Numbers, ie. you can take many calls. A phone such as a Nortel 1140E, can support multiple calls at one time on ONE SIP trunk.

Disadvantage
-Power Outage (but if you are a small business with cordless you are out of luck anyways)

Thank you.

 

[Dexman]

Gordon....

TDM systems (such as the Avaya Partner ACS, Merlin Legend & Magix) have power fail ports. If you lose AC power all you need to do is connect a basic wired SLT to the designated ports and you have instant dial tone. As you mentioned, you lose power with an Internet-based system (at least ones that a small business might consider) you're dead in the water. A basic UPS might work for a short duration outage, but any extended downtime will wipe out even the heartiest UPS on the market.

The average person on the street, when they hear VoIP thinks about Vonage, Packet8 and all of the various providers that require a connection via the public Internet.

Other points to consider:

Is there someone on staff who knows IT/IP to troubleshoot problems?

With many services (hosted esp.) you pay per feature/per extension. With TDM you own the system and don't have to pay extra every time you want to add an extension or a feature to an extension (unless you max out the available ports at which point you simply add an expansion module to the system and you're off to the races).

TDM is still more reliable than IP. IP is more complex than TDM. With TDM, the cost of a good single or 2 line telephone is much less than SIP sets. If a regular telephone breaks, a replacement is easier to secure than an IP unit.

I guess if I had to condense everything I've laid out here, it is, again, IP is not the be all/end all despite the fact that it is often presented as such. Yes, IP is becoming more common, but TDM still has a long life ahead of it and won't be going away any time soon. Until then, let the consumer weigh the pros and cons of each and decide which way to go.

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[GordonKapesMZ4]

Dexman,

Thank you for the information and you are right, let's let the Customer make the right choice for them. This ip stuff is still very new and exciting and I do understand it has some glitches.

I d love a cs1000 tdm switch to experiment with, the ip and digital Nortel phones work quite wonderfully on this switch.

For small environments the bcm and norstar and partner worked great with analog trunks. Now if we could get rid of the pop when you hang up an analog call, that would be awesome! Lol thanks again.

Joe

 

[Dexman]

I sometimes wish the click could be softened.

The downside is that the click is the result of a positive disconnect signal (momentary loss of voltage) being sent by the central office. Without it, answering machines and voicemail ports would become hung and receptionists would see a surge of phantom calls ringing in on their consoles.

(Brief topic detour)

As a central office technician for an IXC/CLEC, I always roll my eyes when an order comes through for bi-directional loop-start trunks on a T1 circuit because of the lack of a positive disconnect.

T1E&M wink & ISDN are much better for 2-way traffic.

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[Dexman]

Oh...my name is Paul. I enjoyed our discussion Gordon!

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[GordonKapesMZ4]

Hey Paul

Great talking to you as well. I'm hoping to chat some more with you about the central office end of telecom. I enjoyed hearing about your knowledge and great discussion topics.

I know this is a geeky thought, but I can really tell a digital/IP trunk from an analog trunk, slowly by the hang up. The digital and IP trunks release silently and the analog of course have the Pop that you described above.

So why do some paging equipment manufacturers make a click or pop after a page announcement, while others release silently.

I can start a new topic if you want

Joe

 

[Dexman]

I'd say open a new topic here in the General forum so that this topic doesn't go off on a tangent.

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[desertinn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcFpaI1Y_SE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUOh9fCSgqw&feature=related

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

Desert,

Thank you so much for these informative and interesting you tube videos! Glad to know I am not the only one who really gets into this stuff! I really enjoyed viewing them and thanks for sharing!

 

[desertinn]

I use to work with the old Bell System Dimemsion PBX 2000 in the 1970's

 

[orypecos]

VOIP phone with VOIP trunk means unintelligible calls with a agent that has any accent at all.