HELLO & WELCOME

[Lumus.Alder]

Ive been set the task of setting up a new phone system in a new office.
Requirements:

8 Handsets with DDI
Voice mail
Internal Transfers
Group Hunt

Looking to bring 2 BT phone numbers over and having a dedicated 24meg ADSL line for Voip.

Biggest concern I have is am I being too relient on VOIP? These are business lines and must have 100% uptime. Trying to work out if it is worth having a traditonal PBX installed alongside and if the cost of doing something like this is worth it. Maybe I should have all the DDI's set to ring the new BT landline number in the event of internet failing?

Any thoughts of opinions would be appreciated I use Voipfone myself for 2 lines but not sure about on a larger scale.

[VoipIT]

Ive been set the task of setting up a new phone system in a new office.
Requirements:

8 Handsets with DDI
Voice mail
Internal Transfers
Group Hunt

Looking to bring 2 BT phone numbers over and having a dedicated 24meg ADSL line for Voip.

Biggest concern I have is am I being too relient on VOIP? These are business lines and must have 100% uptime. Trying to work out if it is worth having a traditonal PBX installed alongside and if the cost of doing something like this is worth it. Maybe I should have all the DDI's set to ring the new BT landline number in the event of internet failing?

Any thoughts of opinions would be appreciated I use Voipfone myself for 2 lines but not sure about on a larger scale.

I've just done the same for an office I support (though only 4 extensions), they've been running this way since March and have had 1 failure. In this instance the main number diverts to the PSTN that the broadband runs on.

I'd recommend that you didn't add an additional PSTN unless the office demands it, but save the option of installing an Asterisk/3ctn server at a later date that handled the DDIs and had PSTN lines connected via a FXO PCI card. You can then have voip failover to the PSTN's (if you had 2 lines one number the BT makes the diverts easier) and also completed the Number Presentation documentation with BT to present the PSTNs as the voip number.

[astraqomuk]

Hello,

We are a VoIP Telephony Provider here in UK and I want you to know that VoIP reliability is determined by your provider's fail safe measures.

As we are a subsidiary of AstraQom International (a global VoIP provider) we have several data centres around the world (e.g. UK, Canada, US, New Zealand, Australia etc.) and in the event that the London data centre goes down phones automatically register with the next closest server and this takes up to 25 seconds.

On the other hand if your internet goes down, we have in place an Internet Failover or Emergency Redirect feature that automatically forwards calls to a different number (e.g. mobile) when our system detects that your devices are no longer registering.

We can help you with everything you need and even provide a 30-Day Free Trial so you can test the system.

If you company commits to a 2 years contract you can choose to either get a 35% discount on monthly recurring charges or to get a free HD IP Phone with each user that you get.

Regarding having a dedicated internet connection, that is always good but keep in mind that 1 active conversation requires around 128 Kbps so even if all your employees talk at the same time (8 active calls) you are looking at 1 Mbps requirement. If your office does not heavy internet traffic (e.g. downloads) a 24 Mbps connection should be fine.

I advise you to check your internet connection for packet loss and jitter before taking any VoIP service and you can do that at the link below:

http://www.onsip.com/tools/voip-test (it requires you to have Java installed on your machine)

We include IVR Professional Recordings that can go anywhere from £30 to £500 depending on the number of words that you have and we also include E-Fax Numbers, Free Portability, anywhere from 500 to Unlimited Landline calling and 100 to 600 mobile minutes PER USER not per account.

Getting your own IP PBX makes sense maybe when you have 70+ users but otherwise the costs involved are not justified.

I encourage you to take a look at our plans http://astraqom.co.uk/business-voip/hosted-voip-pbx/ and see for yourself what we offer.

If you need a custom package we can also arrange that but I believe our packages are built for every time of company.

For more details you can send me a PM or call our guys at 0800-048-8003 and what the best solution would be for your business.

Best regards,

Gabriel

[SteveAtVoIP2Go]

Biggest concern I have is am I being too relient on VOIP?

It's good that you are concerned about redundancy. Most VoIP Providers are very lacking in this area and their services go down often. Here are some things to check that will give you a good indication of how serious your potential VoIP provider is on redundancy:

1. Geographic Redundancy. Not much point having 10 servers in a single data center as whole data centers go down on a routine basis. Make sure your VoIP provider has multiple servers in multiple data centers.

2. Secondary DNS. This is the one most often overlooked. One provider I know forgot to renew DNS service for their domain name last month and their whole service went down. DNS Services are often affected by DDoS attacks, so just as DNS is essential to the whole Internet, Secondary DNS with a backup provider is also essential for VoIP.

3. DNS SRV. This allows VoIP devices to automatically switch between servers.

4. Web site and email on a different domain to VoIP servers. What's the first thing you do when there is a problem with your VoIP service? You head to the provider web site..... which is often also down! You send them an email, but there's no reply. I've seen this happen so many times and Customers get so frustrated. Yes, some providers have Twitter feeds, but from a Customer perspective, it gives them much more confidence if they can communicate with you via email or see updates on your web site.

Taking that extra bit of time at the outset, could save you a lot of hassle in the future ;)

[Lumus.Alder]

Thank you everyone for your advice and opinions so far. :)

Gabriel i will take a look at your plans later this afternoon when I have more time. If i need any more info i will give you a ring on the number shown in your post above.

Taking that extra bit of time at the outset, could save you a lot of hassle in the future ;)

I will and thank you! You have raised some points i hadn't taken into consideration.

[Lumus.Alder]

I advise you to check your internet connection for packet loss and jitter before taking any VoIP service and you can do that at the link below:

http://www.onsip.com/tools/voip-test (it requires you to have Java installed on your machine)

I got the following results:

Code: Select all

Test Type:	Voice over IP
Downstream Jitter:	0.5 ms
Downstream Loss:	0 %
Downstream Packet Order:	100 %
Upstream Jitter:	0.5 ms
Upstream Loss:	0 %
Upstream Packet Order:	100.0 %
Packet Discards:	0 %
MOS Score:	4.2

So hopefully all will go well. :)

[astraqomuk]

I advise you to check your internet connection for packet loss and jitter before taking any VoIP service and you can do that at the link below:

http://www.onsip.com/tools/voip-test (it requires you to have Java installed on your machine)

I got the following results:

Code: Select all

Test Type:	Voice over IP
Downstream Jitter:	0.5 ms
Downstream Loss:	0 %
Downstream Packet Order:	100 %
Upstream Jitter:	0.5 ms
Upstream Loss:	0 %
Upstream Packet Order:	100.0 %
Packet Discards:	0 %
MOS Score:	4.2

So hopefully all will go well. :)

That looks really good :).

I would like to know a bit more about your business as we get involved in more than just phone service (if our clients ask us to).
We just helped one of our customers advertise their business via E-SMS. FYI: Unlike emails, SMS messages have an open rate of 99% and 90% of them are read withing 3 minutes of being received and reaching out to 1000 clients via SMS costs around £ 44 (with us).

We apply white glove treatment for all our customers as we want to be perceived as more than just a phone service provider. That is why our motto is AstraQom - Your Telecom Business Partner :D .

So if you want to discuss a bit more about how your company works and what would be the best solution for you,feel free to drop an email as I am always watching our email address info@astraqom.co.uk :) and I will reply as soon as possible.

Forgot to mention that our IP Phones come pre-configured and you only need to plug them in so there is no effort on your part.

P.S. Did you get the chance to look at our plans ?

Cheers!

Gabriel