VoIP vs "traditional"?

[archalot]

Its time (way past time) to replace our outdated Executone 228 system. Office has about 55 extensions. We currently have 2 T1's with around 24 voice lines and 512K data. An important part of our business is a small call center with 4-5 agents.

I'm trying to decide whether or not to entertain VoIP solutions, or stick with the "tried-and-true" switches.

Suggestions and/or warnings to be aware of would be greatly appreciated.

Archalot
Columbia, SC

 

[Bo9]

I have to second the hybrid system. I have two sites with the all the desk sets wired traditionally, IP trunking between sites, remote agents set up as dual connect using IP Agent to control their phone, and IP wireless sets at both sites. This has all been implemented for about two years. In that time we have had periods where the IP trunks have been down due to either our network equipment or the circuit going down. But in the 9+ years I have been here I have never had the traditional equipment fail in a way that caused down time. In contrast, about a year and a half ago we let a vendor try to wow us with an IP solution to add some CTI features to our call center, nine months later the Windows based system was still unstable and could not be made to perform as promised. It never even ran a week without crashing severely enough to need a full reinstall. Throughout the IP project we also looked at what it was going to take to make the system "bulletproof", and the cost of the extra battery backup volume, and redundant switches just to make the call center less likely to fail was enough to make the bean counters shudder with fear.
But enough about the failed system, as it sits now I have better that "five nines" at two locations and a little less between those locations with a hybrid system.

 

[aarenot]

Bo9,
The less than five nines performance between sites was because of the phone system, or your network? From what I understand the data equipment, or your point to point t1'S failed? I would assume your CTI component which failed was windows based?

 

[johnpoole]

99 times out of a hundred, voip problems are networked based. even when you mark data de 1 and voice de 0, frame relay doesn't look at that field.. congestion happens. taking 7 seconds to download a file, instead of 5 barely gets noticed, the same performance on the voice side is a dropped call.. if you like the way cell phones work, then your going to love voip... our voip, wireless in house (ccm) is perfect, covers 4 of the 18 buildings in the complex, when you get a call from the cisco to the nortel, it's a perfect call. if we has that signal coverage and bandwidth campus wide, it would be a great stand alone system, but back to the tdm, i would still use isdm/pri

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[Bo9]

aarnot
Yes, the problems have always been with our point to point or the network equipment on either end.
The CTI product we tried was windows based and if it crashed we lost the entire call center. After it went out the door we implemented a different product from the same vendor as our switch that kept our existing traditional stucture in the call center but added the screen pops and routing features we wanted. Now if the CTI crashes (still windows based) we still have business as usual but with no added features.