Voip phones

Pet Nanny · Jan 5, 2016

We are currently in the process of relocating and would like to migrate our land line telephone number with us as opposed to changing all our details and notifying our existing clients.
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I recently heard about having a VOIP phone in which you can do this and at the same time, keeping our business line separate from our business.

Does anyone here use one, or something similar and if so, could they offer a recommendation.

estwig · Jan 5, 2016

I'll be the first of many I'm sure to recommend Voipfone, CJD on here. Been with them years, doesn't get any better.

Combine them with a Snom 300 and you're laughing.

ServWise · Jan 5, 2016

Indeed, +1 for VoipFone, give them a look see.

nahosting · Jan 5, 2016

Another vote for voipfone. Use with Zoiper on mobiles and Akuvox desk phones.

Quest Cloud Solutions Ltd · Jan 5, 2016

Hosted VoIP would be the best choice as you can easily port your existing number, and its so intuitive to use.
We provide a complete service on this including free migration and setup for you; drop me a message and I'd be delighted to give you more details.

ldjames · Jan 5, 2016

We use www.dial9.co.uk and can't recommend them enough. Great company behind it.

it-comms · Jan 5, 2016

Hi,

We offer packages starting from £19.99 per month with Unlimited Extensions, Call Recording, and low cost calls. feel free to send me a PM for more info

cjd · Jan 5, 2016

Pet Nanny said:
We are currently in the process of relocating and would like to migrate our land line telephone number with us as opposed to changing all our details and notifying our existing clients.

That's all very simple, quick and low cost. Look at our web site and/or give us a call 020 7043 5555.

Pet Nanny · Jan 6, 2016

cjd said:
That's all very simple, quick and low cost. Look at our web site and/or give us a call 020 7043 5555.

Cannot get a dialling tone on that number!

RelyOnIT · Jan 6, 2016

Pet Nanny said:
Cannot get a dialling tone on that number!

Can not get through to voipfone this morning either and can't make any outgoing calls on my voipfone account either. Problems in voipfone towers this morning CJD?

AllUpHere · Jan 6, 2016

RelyOnIT said:
Can not get through to voipfone this morning either and can't make any outgoing calls on my voipfone account either. Problems in voipfone towers this morning CJD?

Yep, my Voipfone is out of action too. I'm back to the good old 'Provider registration failed' screen on my phone.

RelyOnIT · Jan 6, 2016

Failback to mobile network then I guess...

incoming calls are okay for me

cjd · Jan 6, 2016

There's a core network outage in one of our provider's networks - we've re-routed traffic and service is recovering

Updates are here

http://www.voipfonestatus.co.uk

and on twitter

http://twitter.com/Voipfonestatus

AllUpHere · Jan 6, 2016

cjd said:
There's a core network outage in one of our provider's networks - we've re-routed traffic and service is recovering

Updates are here

http://www.voipfonestatus.co.uk

and on twitter

http://twitter.com/Voipfonestatus

Yep, can confirm my phone is up and running again already.

cjd · Jan 6, 2016

All clear - though the operator's transit network is fcuked. Failover networks are a wonderful thing.

RelyOnIT · Jan 6, 2016

thanks for the info - yes mines up and running again.

AllUpHere · Jan 6, 2016

@cjd It seems whenever there is a glitch my phone panics and just says 'provider registration failed' until I reboot? If I don't notice this can be like this (and not accepting incoming calls) for some time. Is there any way to fix this?

cjd · Jan 6, 2016

AllUpHere said:
@cjd It seems whenever there is a glitch my phone panics and just says 'provider registration failed' until I reboot? If I don't notice this can be like this (and not accepting incoming calls) for some time. Is there any way to fix this?

Phones should just reconnect - we need to know what phones you're using. It could also be the router having a wobble when connection is lost. If you call 020 7043 5555 and describe your problem, we should be able to help.

Probably best to wait a little - things are a bit busy atm ;-)

AllUpHere · Jan 6, 2016

cjd said:
Phones should just reconnect - we need to know what phones you're using. It could also be the router having a wobble when connection is lost. If you call 020 7043 5555 and describe your problem, we should be able to help.

Probably best to wait a little - things are a bit busy atm ;-)

Thought you prob had enough on your plate already today.

I've spend quite a bit of time on the phone to support before about the problem. They are always very helpful, but the problem always persists. I just thought I'd ask the question whilst I had the attention of the top man. Can't blame me for trying.

Spock · Jan 6, 2016

So how often does voip go down? I'm going to be moving office to my home and was looking at a simple voip system as I presume the calls are cheaper and you don't have to have a landline installed? So basically you buy a special phone and use a service provider?

it-comms · Jan 6, 2016

VoIP is stable. Some providers do not have downtime and others do. for example, our last outage was September last year and previous to that was over a year ago.

We for example run our services at two data centres with live data replication between the two data centres. If the first data centre goes offline. All phones will connect to the other data centre and service resume.

You will still need a BT Phone Line if using ADSL / VDSL or if you use Virgin Media, you will not then need a landline as the internet is on a dedicated coax cable.

VoIP is more flexible not always cheaper depending on what you want to do.

cjd · Jan 6, 2016

Spock said:
So how often does voip go down? I'm going to be moving office to my home and was looking at a simple voip system as I presume the calls are cheaper and you don't have to have a landline installed? So basically you buy a special phone and use a service provider?

VoIP itself is now a mature technology and pretty much all UK calls are carried using it somewhere in the network. BT are converting to it entirely, so you're going there whether you like it or not!

But not all providers of end-user VoIP are the same, it's possible to offer a VoIP service from your bedroom with no resilience or redundancy at all. More established and reputable companies spend millions on their networks developing systems and processes that can reduce the chances of failure and use mechanisms so that when the worst happens - which it inevitably will - customers aren't affected.

This is how our network is built:

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

But nothing is 100% guaranteed and today a failure in a core network provider's network caused a problem in ours. In iteslf that shouldn't have been a problem because we triplicate providers and have automatic failover between them. On this occasion the provider's system flapped rather than broke outright so the system didn't failover automatically - it had to be re-routed manually. So that's something we need to consider for the future. Even so, it didn't affect all customers and it was fixed in about 15 minutes (I think - not had the report yet).

Most good providers will aim for 99.99% uptime or better and that's been our outcome for over 5 years with several at 100%.

This year ITSPA is introducing independent monitoring of VoIP providers and in order to get their quality mark certificate they need to achieve that 99.99% - as well as several other high performance indicators. Pick a company that has its quality mark.

http://www.itspa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/QualityMark_Application.docx

Pet Nanny · Jan 6, 2016

I will try you again in the morning.

Alan · Jan 6, 2016

@Spock my office Voip phone is more reliable than my hardwired supported by OpenReach home line. In the last year my home phone has had 1 wrong routed number (lines physically crossed by engineering) and two unusable amount of crackle - the current fault won't get fixed until 15th Jan as they can't get access to the faulty cable.

I also use vopifone - but didn't notice any outage today.

Pet Nanny · Jan 7, 2016

Am tearing my hair out having spoken to two different people at Sky.

I still don't know if l can use a VoIP phone with my Sky telephone.

Any ideas!!

cjd · Jan 7, 2016

Do you mean using a VoIP service over you Sky Broadband?

Pet Nanny · Jan 7, 2016

Yes, that is correct. I created an account this afternoon, but l have been given different information by your Viop gentleman & two Sky representatives. It is imperative that we can migrate our landline number by 22 Jan so it diverts to my mobile during the transistuion period, but l still don't know if having our broad rand & telephone with Sky will enable us to do this, so l have to hit the phones again first thing tomorrow. It is a nightmare!

cjd · Jan 8, 2016

Divertion to mobile doesn't require VoIP - that will work no matter what.

Pet Nanny said:
Yes, that is correct. I created an account this afternoon, but l have been given different information by your Viop gentleman & two Sky representatives. It is imperative that we can migrate our landline number by 22 Jan so it diverts to my mobile during the transistuion period, but l still don't know if having our broad rand & telephone with Sky will enable us to do this, so l have to hit the phones again first thing tomorrow. It is a nightmare!

The problem is that Sky use routers that use a thing called SIP ALG. This causes all sorts of problems for VoIP but can normally be switched off. But Sky's router can't be changed - it's locked.

Having said that, it doesn't usually cause a problem for a single phone, it just falls over using multiple phones. Even so, we have a simple workaround for it using a different registration method.

Ignoring all that for the minute - you can simply test whether it works for you buy downloading the free soft phone - if it works for that, it'll be fine. The support guys will help you.

AllUpHere · Jan 8, 2016

cjd said:
Divertion to mobile doesn't require VoIP - that will work no matter what.

The problem is that Sky use routers that use a thing called SIP ALG. This causes all sorts of problems for VoIP but can normally be switched off. But Sky's router can't be changed - it's locked.

Having said that, it doesn't usually cause a problem for a single phone, it just falls over using multiple phones. Even so, we have a simple workaround for it using a different registration method.

Ignoring all that for the minute - you can simply test whether it works for you buy downloading the free soft phone - if it works for that, it'll be fine. The support guys will help you.

Must be similar for the Virgin router too. I was told by Voipfone support that Voip is also problematic with these (and it may be the cause of the problem I described in my earlier post).

My Owl 1 · Jan 8, 2016

I suggest to my business customers that they have VOIP if more than one line required, and that they have one landline number with their broadband provider so that if the VOIP goes down they still have a number that is active. Like all technological devices there is going to be some down time. Whether it is mobile, voip or internet. As the demand grows then the infrastructures gets stretched as we have seen with a mobile provider when their whole system went down recently.
I would however highly recommend CJD for Voip and he will definitely fill you in with the pluses and the hiccups that may occur.

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