VOIP Recommendations?

[webgeek]

My day job is at a company with a small(ish) team of workers distributed across the UK. As such, we found that VOIP was a great way to save on calls (thanks to Centrex International Unlimited packages), plus we needed an IVR to grab inbound calls when someone is available and route them to the call centres when not.

I'm looking to switch providers since my current one has intermittent call quality issues, which occur often enough to to be reason to leave.

Our current provider is a reseller of the Gradwell service, so please don't recommmend anything from them.

Also, we require something with a Centrex International Unlimited, which may mean Asterisk based (but I could be wrong).

Any suggestions? We don't need it to be unreasonbly cheap to switch, but we would like to have similar pricing and better service.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[SneakSMS]

plenty of us here are with voipfone.co.uk

CJD runs it I think (CDJ being his username on here)

The service is fantastic, and all hosted by them so no need for hardware unless you want to use proper IP phones (highly recommended)

 

[sean.browne]

My day job is at a company with a small(ish) team of workers distributed across the UK. As such, we found that VOIP was a great way to save on calls (thanks to Centrex International Unlimited packages), plus we needed an IVR to grab inbound calls when someone is available and route them to the call centres when not.

I'm looking to switch providers since my current one has intermittent call quality issues, which occur often enough to to be reason to leave.

Our current provider is a reseller of the Gradwell service, so please don't recommmend anything from them.

Also, we require something with a Centrex International Unlimited, which may mean Asterisk based (but I could be wrong).

Any suggestions? We don't need it to be unreasonbly cheap to switch, but we would like to have similar pricing and better service.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi webgeek,

Just some impartial advice. I have lots of customers using lots of providers, Gradwell included. I do know Gradwells support has gone down hill since they started but thats another matter. However, I wouldn't be too quick to conclude the quality issues are the ITSP's fault.

It's more likely, call quality issues are related to the local connection to the Internet.. latency, upstream bandwidth, codecs in use, and computersusing available bandwidth.

Just worth considering before you go to the trouble of switching supplier.

Sean Browne
AsteriskExpert.co.uk

 

[cjd]

If you're using Gradwell you've already made the investment in SIP phones so you can easily trial other services without committing to leaving them fully.

Gradwell are generally a decent company so as Sean suggests, you may have a local problem that you need to resolve before your systems will work on any Service Provider's network. Trialling another network would confirm or deny that.

As far as we're concerned, we can do what you're looking for.

 

[webgeek]

With regard to the call quality possibly being a local issue...

Some users are 15 hops from the asterisk box while others are a only a handful away, virtually sitting atop the data centre.

Generally speaking, we have people on Zen's premium business ADSL, though many of us have secondary connections on a variety of services. The Zen pingtimes to the rest of the universe have been great and packet loss virtually unheard of, especially from their side.

Any time a VOIP issue is reported we immediately have the user fire up a a tracert and identify where along the route pings are spiking. This information is always on the VOIP provider side of the cloud, though not always the same router. These details are passed along to them to 'be investigated.'

I've even gone so far as to load up a sniffer and see exactly what was happening, and again it's confirmed the service provider is the weak link in the chain.

I realise there are no guarantees someone else won't have similar problems, and that I should probably just throw together a dedicated Rackspace box to host our system, but am trying to contain costs where it makes sense - hence the need for Centrex International Unlimited...

With regard to phones, everyone has either Bria for Outlook, or standalone, and a few of us have DECT phones as well.

Funny that the DECT's have so much better call quality, even when comparing to Bria/BFO/Zoipper on an idle PC. I have suggested on a few occasions that perhaps it's a codec issue, but not had anyone engage fully enough to walk through that side of it.

CJD - would you mind pm'ing me here or advising how I can go about getting a trial account on your system? I'm not asking for a freebie, but would like a no commitment service for a month or so (at a reasonable rate), and have plenty of chances to test it out before considering migrating everyone.

Thanks all for taking the time to reply, advise of concerns, and offer help, it's much appreciated.

 

[cjd]

CJD - would you mind pm'ing me here or advising how I can go about getting a trial account on your system? I'm not asking for a freebie, but would like a no commitment service for a month or so (at a reasonable rate), and have plenty of chances to test it out before considering migrating everyone.

Just give us a call - 020 7043 5555 - and ask for a free month trial code, then mess around as much as you like.

I don't much like the sound of what you're trying to use though - softphones aren't generally great and are a bit of a support issue (although we have some very big businesses using them). I'd be a lot happier with decent VoIP hardware.

Anyhoo - give it a go and see how you get on.

 

[Jameschillman]

Thumbs up for voipfone from here! Have also heard some good things about Gradwell.

 

[crumble]

We use Voiptalk http://www.voiptalk.org at my place. Insurance 'call centre' (5 people over two locations) and it's great. Support we receive is excellent too.

 

[glennbtn]

I use a company called vostel (www.vostel.co.uk) Great service and loads of features. They run there own servers direct at the isp so call quality really good all the time. Even have calls forwarded to my mobile if no one in the offices answers the calls.

 

[leemason]

I have used Gradwell for a while and they provide a good quality service. However when ADSL is bad in a specific area quality will suffer. If you have a reasonable number of phone users it might be worth looking at a voice specific ADSL provider such as Fluidata who provide a VOX0.8 service which is 800Kb up and down and provide high quality and low latency lines for VoIP. I've implemented one of these for a customer who was having continual problem before and they are all sorted now.

 

[anonoymous123]

Clarus Communications
they helped me out alot with my taxi firm. I was receiving problems with crackling and losing connections, they quickly rectified my problem and installed me a far more suitable product.
www . clarusuk.com

 

[kethnox]

Try RingCentral VoIP service. They provide a lot phone features and also integrated with fax services.

 

[cjd]

Try RingCentral VoIP service. They provide a lot phone features and also integrated with fax services.

Ring Central are a US company, are not VoIP and only provide an inbound service. Not the way to do it at all.

 

[Adam_Webb]

We (VoiceHost) can also help you out.

If you visit our website w ww. voicehost .co.uk it will give you a good indication as to what we can offer you and you can also set up your free account and download a free softphone.

If you would like to talk to someone about your specific needs, give us a call or send me an e-mail with your requirements we/I will be more than happy to help.

adam.webb at voicehost.co.uk

0800 52 00 878

Cheers,

Adam

p.s sorry about the links, im a new member!

 

[kethnox]

Try visiting PBX reviews site (pbx101.com). There a lot of VoIP services you can choose from the list. Review its services first before subscribing.​

 

[MarcusMiller]

Another vote for voipfone, have been with them for 2.5 years with no problems. It's internet telephony though so make sure you have a good quality internet connection. We use the Zen internet business connection and find that to be a winning combo.

 

[icomplete]

Hi I'm sorry to hear that you are getting poor line quality with your current VoIP provider. We always get our prospective customers to test there existing line quality before they buy. We had a recent customer who had tried various providers but the quality wasn't there - he works in a rural area but we tested the in-going and out-going quality of the line etc and now he has converted to us. If you have any questions please feel free to call us: 01793 250002

 

[rickytedd]

You may want to check the virtualpbxcompare.com site to see comparison of different providers in terms of price, plan, functionality, features, etc.

 

[Adam_Webb]

Is this not an American website?

 

[cjd]

Useless for UK Business I'm afraid. For UK you need to check http://www.itspa.org.uk/members.htmlk and pick one with a quality mark.

 

[Adam_Webb]

Link not found CJD!

 

[cjd]

Yes, it's broken and I'm timed out for editing - this is the correct one

www.itspa.org.uk/members.html

 

[Deleted member 79370]

Any voip recommendations that you can call 090 premium rate numbers with? the only one that i can find that allow you to call 090 numbers is voip.co.uk.

 

[cjd]

Any voip recommendations that you can call 090 premium rate numbers with? the only one that i can find that allow you to call 090 numbers is voip.co.uk.

Not many will allow it because it's a quagmire of fraud and risk. We will allow calls to particular 09 numbers once we've checked that they're genuine.

 

[Deleted member 79370]

ok thanks, the only 09 numbers i was looking for was the TV voting numbers.

 

[Deleted member 79370]

Any free voip trials going????

 

[Deleted member 79370]

The only thing i dont like about voipfone is that they dont do direct debit.

 

[cjd]

May possibly do DD sometime in the future, we're just discussing it with the bank. Can you say why you prefer it to card?

 

[Deleted member 79370]

Just like to make all my calls and pay at the end of the month with invoice so i know what is going out at a fixed date, at the mo you only do pre-pay with card.

 

[MikeJ]

FWIW, I'd be much happier with this too.

I'm paying by card because I really wanted to use your service for redirect and fax-email but I'm sure I forget to claim back some of the charges sometimes.

 

[cjd]

The problem for us is that pre-pay reduces bad debt to zero; post pay has you messing around with aged debtors, chasing non-payers and increases costs. Of course your services like extensions and numbers are billed monthly - it's just your calls that are topped up as and when. (You could reduce the frequency by increasing the top-up level.)