VoIP vs Traditional Telephony!!!!

[Trident]

Why does everyone want to get VoIP whats wrong with traditional telephony, being in the telecoms industry i would much rather own a traditional telephone system rather than a VoIP one, and thats not a beist opinion as i sell both.

Cheer Dan,

[SillyJokes]

cheaper?
easier to take with you when you move?
easier to network?

I dunno, why wouldn't you?

[Trident]

Im not to sure thats why i put up the post!

Alot of people have bin told that you can just plug in a VoIP phone and it will work, but surely if you do that then you are running it on your network but off somebody else's switch therefore you have no control over fixing the system when it breaks down etc!! Also depending on how you do it, i believe that you can only contact other people with VoIP which i suppose is only good for companies with more than one office.

[Rob Holmes]

Why does everyone want to get VoIP whats wrong with traditional telephony, being in the telecoms industry i would much rather own a traditional telephone system rather than a VoIP one, and thats not a beist opinion as i sell both.

I don't understand Dan,

Heres what you offer on your site..

<snip>
Consultancy:
Are you ready for VoIP?
Our LAN analysis service “VoIP Integrity”
Call Costs & Tariffs - How much can you really save?
</snip>

Rob

[Trident]

Like i said Rob i sell the systems i dont install them and do all the engineering!!

Besides the main part of my job at the moment is telesales, which is why i sent out the VoIP consultants that know what their talking about and why I put up this post!

[Rob Holmes]

I for one have found it unreliable and of less quality - I'm writing from someone who has used skype (which I have heard is not as good as the rest) and I have a client in the states who uses Vonage and he is switching back to landlines as they have downtime, routing problems etc etc

I would say VOIP is still improving and should be better and cheaper in a couple of years.

What do you think Trident?

Rob

[Trident]

I agree but when will VoIP improve and get cheaper as its been getting hyped up for the last six years or so!!

[Rob Holmes]

I agree but when will VoIP improve and get cheaper as its been getting hyped up for the last six years or so!!

I don't know I'm not in the industry.

Do you goto VOIP trade shows etc etc?

What do they say there?

Are the major companies already in place or will someone like Google or Microsoft step into the arena ?

Rob

[cjd]

Well VoIP is my business so I guess I believe in it :-)

I first wrote a strategy paper on VoIP (for BT) in 1994 when it was a working but poor technology. Now that we have standards based technology (SIP, QoS, etc) and widespead access to broadband it's time has come.

Pretty much every call you make today uses VoIP at some point (because it's a more economic transport mechanism than circuit switching) and by the turn of this Century BT will have converted ALL of it's networks over to VoIP - they call it the 21 Century project.

VoIP is cheap, flexible and does a huge amount of stuff that a traditional network literally can't do.

There's a small introduction here:

http://www.voipfone.co.uk/FAQ.php

Just on a couple of points of information, you can phone any other phone in the world with VoIP but if the other phone is also VoIP it can be a free call.

Skype is a proprietary network - good for kids and free calls to your relatives but not a real business service. In the next year google, yahoo, Aol, microsoft etc etc will all launch or re-launch 'Skype-alikes'

Reliability - The technology is stable, we depend utterly on it ourselves but it is not a '5 nines' industry yet. ie 99.999% reliable - which is the traditional telecoms claim. You will get the occasional glitch but in return you get amazing features and functionality at virtually no cost.