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Solutions for Small Business VoIP?

Posted by Cliff on from the from-copper-to-network dept.

MajorBlunder asks: "I'm part of the IT department of a small but prospering software company. We have recently filled the capacity of the POTS PBX phone system we currently have installed. We are currently looking into switching over to a VoIP phone system. We have a sizable IT staff in proportion to the rest of the company, so we'd like to be able to maintain the hardware/software in house as much as possible. I wanted to ask the Slashdot readership what experiences they have had with switching over to from POTS to VoIP. Any recomendations for full end to end solutions would be appreciated, and recomendations of things to avoid would be great."

2 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. We use the Cisco IP Phones & Service.. by PogiTalonX · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I work for a company that has about 12 people and we use the Cisco Systems IP Phones. They work pretty well, have all the features of a normal PBX including intercom, call transferring, etc and they're relatively cheap.

    The cool thing about these phones is each phone gets its own real phone number as well as internal extension. We are located in California and when we have trade shows in Florida we take one of these phones and plug it into any ethernet jack. The phone auto-configures itself and you get the same phone number and extension and you can call other people in the office on speaker as if you were in the next cubicle. Pretty rad. Hope this helps.

  2. Re:My experience by neilticktin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We're getting ready to do a cover story in our magazine about our experiences with VoIP. To do this, we decided to "eat our own dog food" and move the entire company to VoIP.

    In short, I'm glad we're on VoIP. We're using a smaller provider, which gives more personalized service ... and that's been a big win. The company is PhonePipe ... www.phonepipe.com ... and aside from the usual bumps in the road, we've been glad that we went with them.

    A few things to consider. Some VoIP companies are not financially stable, and they many times don't fall under the FCC rules. So, you should check out the companies you are dealing with ... even some of the biggest ones are not financially sound.

    For hardware, go with either ATAs or the Cisco phones. ATAs will allow you to preserve your prior investment.

    Lastly, be aware that you may need to do some traffic shaping, QoS, etc... And, that many times, the cheap consumer routers handle VoIP much better than the higher end stuff (believe it or not).

    Favorite features? Simultaneous ring, and the ability to filter which calls get through and which get routed right to voicemail.

    Good luck with it!

    Thanks,
    Neil Ticktin
    Publisher, MacTech Magazine