Need a telephone system

[sirius]

Hi

Can anyone suggest a small office telephone system? I ordered BT's Micro system but after a cagalogue of disasters, that the BT people really don't seem to care about, I cancelled the phone system today.

We have one line coming in and three extensions but may need a couple more in the future.

The Micro System was attractive because it offered the normal phone line and two voip. I didn't really understand how that would work but hey i don't need to understand it just use it.

I didn't put this in the IT/Internet Forum because my main consideration is the phone normal phone line, addional stuff would be good but isn't the main priority.

All help much appreciated

 

[cjd]

Yes, we can probably help but I'm too knackered to type it all out half past midnight

Have a look at our web site - particularly the PBX bits and give us a call - 020 7043 5555 - tomorrow.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

sirius,

what is your budget?

If you could push it to £600-700, you could look at a smeserver product that handles voip and PSTN, as well as having a 'network in a box' - email, file sharing, network management etc.

Would that be of any use?

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

oh, and connected to voipfones service, it would give you cheap calls, DDI's etc, although their virtual phone system is a good alternative!

 

[sirius]

Know the feeling...early hours of the morning i've been squinting for hours....

Our budget is limited to what we would have paid the the Micro £350 ex VAT. We are a not for profit and have a very limited budget as you can see

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

There is something called an IP04, which is a little compact VOIP pbx which can also work with BT lines, with some additional modules. Not necasarilyone for the novice, I understand!

Go to x100p.eu and have a look!

 

[stugster]

Stop wasting your money mate. Get Voipfone.co.uk with a few snom300s. Job done. case closed


I honestly don't see the point in spending hundreds of pounds to keep such a simple service on-going - especially when it's BT that are running it!

Get signed up to voipfone, purchase your clever VOIP Telephones (approx £95 I think) and then that's you all set. As many outgoing calls as you like As many incoming calls as you like. All from the same telephone number.

I think you pay somethin like £1.55 a month for each internal line (i.e. dial 201 to go thru to someone else within the office - or even at home).

If I were you, I'd sign up anyway, get yourself ONE snom300, and have a play. You wont go back

 

[elofty]

Stop wasting your money mate. Get Voipfone.co.uk with a few snom300s. Job done. case closed


I honestly don't see the point in spending hundreds of pounds to keep such a simple service on-going - especially when it's BT that are running it!

Get signed up to voipfone, purchase your clever VOIP Telephones (approx £95 I think) and then that's you all set. As many outgoing calls as you like As many incoming calls as you like. All from the same telephone number.

I think you pay somethin like £1.55 a month for each internal line (i.e. dial 201 to go thru to someone else within the office - or even at home).

If I were you, I'd sign up anyway, get yourself ONE snom300, and have a play. You wont go back

I agree with stugster, this is the best line to go down. Costs penuts as well. All you need is a decent dsl connection entanet business for about 25 quid a month and about £4.96 + VAT for a line and 3 extentions from voipfone. which will allow unlimited ingoing and outgoing calls (each snom suppoers something like 10-15 calls on hold per phone) You can also impliment the features of a pbx for minimal amounts of money. I would advise if you go down this route, dont buy cheap hardware. Snom are the best voip brand for reliability so this it's advisable to get them ( you can get them from around £60 a handset)

HTH

 

[lee76]

Try a company called Voice 2 voice in Stafford, this is a company that we work closely with, the gentleman that you need to speak to is either Mark Hill, or Warren stroud.

 

[sirius]

Hi folks

Thanks for all the advice and as much as I would never use BT for anything personal (drip feed technology bleep… bleep … bleeps...) I really can't get my head round the voip thing.

We have a skype phone and it is pretty useless. If I log onto it on one computer I see calls that I can't see on the original computer it’s on.

We also aren't based in the inner city and it took a significant period of time before we had access to the faster broadband speeds. Not being a betting woman I would be happy to put money on us not having access to broadband over 2.5/3 meg for at least a decade.

Our one line coming in is also our broadband connection, which we've got with BT. I did a test on our speed today and it rated it lower than BT's average speed, which I would think is home user average speed and not business.

As well as a couple of office staff we have volunteers coming in using the computers and the internet, so I’m already a little concerned about how adequate our internet connection is going to be, which I would assume impacts on voip.

Are there any fact sheets I could use or sites that explain voip in a way I could understand it. I don’t feel comfortable making recommendations on technology I don’t really understand.

Thanks J

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

sirius,
where are you in the uk - which area? If we could get an idea, we may be able to see what your phone exchange can offer!

 

[elofty]

normal advice is to get a seperate dsl line for the phones however if its only 2 or 3 its fine. I run 3 voip lines at home as well as 4 laptops and a desktop. so long as your not downloading heavilly it should be fine. as ive said before voip uses 64kbps each way so 192kbps upload and download are all that is needed if all 3 phones are in use at the same time.

 

[cjd]

I really can't get my head round the voip thing.

You're not alone - nobody ever can; including me.......

Are there any fact sheets I could use or sites that explain voip in a way I could understand it. I don't feel comfortable making recommendations on technology I don't really understand.

There's a 'what is VoIP?' page here that also links to other good guides.

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

You can try it for free - it's probably the best way to get to understand it. Explanation here:

https://www.voipfone.co.uk/Voipfone_User_Manual.htm#_Toc187049847

You can get an idea of how good your connection is likely to be here:

http://www.testmyvoip.com/

 

[leemason]

Have a look at Trixbox (www.trixbox.com). This is based on a Open Source system called Asterisk (www.asterisk.org). It is a really excellent system and provides many more functions that any small phone system you can buy. You can even run a call centre from it. I have installed this for a number of people and it works really well.

It will run on any hardware, even your old P.III system with 128MB of memory that's no good for anything else. It costs nothing but a bit of time to try it out with a free downloaded softphone (like the X-lite phone at http://www.counterpath.com/13#Download).

Lee

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

to connect trixbox to your BT phone, you will need a special card, of which a basic one is £20 (AX100P - there MAY be issues with caller id with this card)! This can go up to nearly £200 (AX400P caller id ok) if you want 4 BT lines or to connect your existing (non voip) phones.

There are a couple suppliers, such as x100p.eu or ipchitchat

Trixbox is great and it works with the voipfone service (they may need to adjust your setting though)

 

[cjd]

Asterisk is splendid but is probably too much for most people - most want to just pick the phone up and use it rather than start learning how to install, run, maintain and configure server operating systems and telephone application software.

You could start using simple stuff from a service provider and go the DIY route as you understand more.......

 

[stugster]

After personally experiencing all the "confuffle" associated with Trixbox or Asterisk... I would say don't bother wasting your time with it.

Outsource it to CJD, and let him have all the problems

 

[Costas Kariolis]

It seems to me from reading your posts that you need some plain and simple advice on voip and what its benefits are, Sirius.Feel free to take a look at our "How does Vonage work" page at vonage.co.uk for a straightforward “non-techie” guide on how our voip service works.

If you have a broadband connection then there is nothing to stop you using our cheap call plans starting at £5.99 a month for unlimited UK landline calls. You also mention that office staff will be using the phones – well, we at Vonage can offer a voip service that provides call quality on a par with a landline and that is an important factor to look at when choosing a provider. I hope this helps you out – you can find more details on our site.

 

[cjd]

Oh bugger, Vonage have arrived - feels just like the Jehova's Witnesses

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

lol!!!!!!!!

 

[sirius]

We are in Tameside, Greater Manchester. The area we are in is Hattersley which is a large housing estate between Hyde and start of the Peak District.

As I said our BT line sounds awful, its really fuzzy sounding which is not the most techincal word i know so hopefully you get what i mean. So i have read concerns about its voip capabilities.

 

[cjd]

We are in Tameside, Greater Manchester. The area we are in is Hattersley which is a large housing estate between Hyde and start of the Peak District.

That shouldn't matter - in fact the more built up the better; it means that you will be fairly close to a BT exchange.

Try this and see what you get:

www.testmyvoip.com

 

[leemason]

We are in Tameside, Greater Manchester. The area we are in is Hattersley which is a large housing estate between Hyde and start of the Peak District.

As I said our BT line sounds awful, its really fuzzy sounding which is not the most techincal word i know so hopefully you get what i mean. So i have read concerns about its voip capabilities.

I have had problems with ADSL quality on noisy BT lines. It might be worth checking your telephone equipment and if that is OK then BT will need to check the cabling coming into the building and the master socket. Cable quality can be an issue sometimes especially with old cable. If you have aluminium cable this is also a problem for ADSL (some part of Milton Keynes I know to have been installed using aluminium).

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Hi

From this thread I would definitely recommend going with voipfone (CJD).
However we are located in Warrington, so if you would like me to I could pop over and show you the VoIP working and go through some of the options?

I hope this helps.

Many Thanks

Leo

 

[m pope]

try a company called ibnetworks, based around London, small friendly crowd, no rubbish BT auto attends just straight forward clear advise from experts (does what it says on the tin!)

ibnetworks dot com
tel. 0800 9555 300

 

[m pope]

try a company called ibnetworks, based around London, small friendly crowd, no rubbish BT auto attends just straight forward clear advise from experts (does what it says on the tin!)

just google ibnetworks


tel. 0800 9555 300

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

That was helpful?

And are all the things on the internet good? I think not!

 

[Travelling Sam]

Hope you don't mind piggy-backing on the thread, but we're going on the same path it seems.

I hate BT. I despise BT. During set-up BT were responsible for 90% of our problems. I spent about an hour a day on the phone to them for a month solid. All I wanted was a phone. And the irony was we are less than 100 metres away from our exchange.

Anyway, now I would consider moving, as they don't offer what we need very effectively, and I can't understand a way round this. And i'm not looking for VOIP based answers (sorry :redface. Our line rental always exceeds the costs of our outgoing phone calls (as we use SKYPE for overseas calls).

Anyway, it's quite simple (well I think it's simple, but please tell me if it's not).

We have 3 staff, one main number. I want incoming calls to ring on all 3 phones. If one person is busy, it'll ring on the other phones so the other two can answer it. We want an answer machine for out of hours (that we can personalise the message).

We want 3 outgoing lines. They do not need distinct numbers.

BT can't provide this, we have 3 lumbering Featurephones, 3 seperate lines (including 1 exclusively for a fax, so we pay 3x line rental, but possibly only need 1 number).

Can anyone advise best step forward in simple terms?

 

[cjd]

Can anyone advise best step forward in simple terms?

Yes. Your best solution is VoIP. Just a fact

Any particular reason why you don't want VoIP? (Skype is not a good advert for VoIP - they even insist that they are not a telephone company.)

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Sam,

unless you go either VoIP or ISDN, you will have an issue where one incoming line will block your system (it will show engaged when you have one call coming in). VoIP and ISDN can get around this.

In your new premisies get either BT or Virgin to put one like in and get ADSL - the faster the better (Virgin, be, O2 etc). Port your old BT line to some one like Voipfone and you will have multiple incoming lines on the same number.

You will end up paying letssfor 3 lines rental (from Voipfone) than BT charge for one!

 

[stugster]

What's the fuss with VOIP!? 99.9% of the time it works! When/If your internet/voip doesn't work, Voipfone have the facility for you to automatically route calls to a landline/other telephone number!

My Internet died last week for a couple of hours, as soon as my Voip telephone stopped registering with Voipfone's network, they automatically route the calls to my mobile phone. Job done

 

[Gavin Harris]

we at Vonage can offer a voip service that provides call quality on a par with a landline and that is an important factor to look at when choosing a provider. I hope this helps you out – you can find more details on our site.

I would steer well clear of Vonage. They were my first venture into VOIP and I was very disappointed. The delay on the line was awful and nearly every call I made the person on the other end commented on the call quality - asking me if I was calling from Australia. The delay also meant that calls were confusing.

I rang their support line on a number of occassions and nothing was ever fixed. In the end I had to cancel because I had a service that was unusable. However, despite the service being so bad, I still had to pay a £30 charge for cancelling the service within my 12 month contract!!! I would never touch Vonage with a bargepole now - they spend their money advertising the product but not on making it work.

It pretty much put me off VOIP until I tried Voipfone and I can honestly say I wish I'd gone with them to begin with. The call quality is perfect, the delay is non existant and the features I get mean I've got a system that feels as powerful as a full PBX in my office.

 

[Pip Thomas]

hi,
if you are still interested in finding the right telephone systems, drop me a line and we will pop over and demo our hosted VoIPO system for you, i am sure not onyl will we save you moeny but also we will provide an improved serviced with all 1st and 2nd line support taken out of your hands, Pip

 

[stugster]

I would steer well clear of Vonage. They were my first venture into VOIP and I was very disappointed. The delay on the line was awful and nearly every call I made the person on the other end commented on the call quality - asking me if I was calling from Australia. The delay also meant that calls were confusing.

It pretty much put me off VOIP until I tried Voipfone and I can honestly say I wish I'd gone with them to begin with. The call quality is perfect, the delay is non existant and the features I get mean I've got a system that feels as powerful as a full PBX in my office.

Totally agree with both points.

With Voipfone, you don't even realise it's over the Internet! I honestly can't tell the difference between Voipfone and a regular telephone call - oh wait, yes I can! I get much more functionality for much less dough!