Are there any disadvantages to VoIP?

The disadvantage of Voip -

Deployment - Traditional telephony companies such as BT owned/own their network and therefore have complete control of the service, end to end.

Should a fault develop BT have the engineers that are trained to fault THEIR network and the analytical tools to discover exactly where the fault may be found. With VoiP there are a number of areas that need to be regulated by the VoiP provider to ensure resilience and quality of speech:

1. LAN ( Local Area Network)
2. WAN ( Wide Area Network)
3. ITSP ( Internet Telephony Service Provider)
4. ISP I (Internet Service Provider)
5. IP PBX ( Telephony Equipment Itself)

Most providers will only take responsibility for a part of the solution, if any of the other areas fail it becomes a blame game, with the end user playing "piggy in the middle".

1. LAN - The LAN must be analyzed to ensure its suitability to carry VoiP traffic. For large deployments a "VoiP doctor" is installed on site that may analyze traffic proactively so that faults may be quickly determined should they occur.

2. WAN - ADSL (Broadband) have SLA's (service level agreements) of 24 hours plus. Can a business afford to be without communications for so long. Have resilience options been considered? Many businesses are only offered a single broadband connection as an option.

3/4. ITSP/ISP - What are the quality of these networks? - Does the provider have instant access to level 3 support in the event of a fault occurring?

5. IP PBX - Is this an open source variety such as AsteRISK that may have security vulnerabilities or a hardened IP PBX such as "Zultys"

VoiP is not simple. We at "500" are a team of VoiP/ Video conferencing experts that have the expertise and quality of partners to take "end to end" responsibility for our deployments.

I am Jonathan Rodwell, the business development manager for "500" - I would invite you to visit our website www.500.uk.com to become more informed on this subject.

I'm strongly disagree about echo. VoIP itself cannot have any echo. There is no possible elecronic cross-talk end-to-end. Echo comes from the speaker-mic pair in the computer or poor quality ATA 2-wire interface. Professional VoIP phone sets have the same or better quality then traditional analog phones. If you buy a cheap no-name phone set, what almost impossible today, you will get the same symptoms: acoustic echo and electronic cross-talk in the thing called a hybrid 2-wire to 4-wire convertor.

Back to disadvantages of VoIP

Traditional phone networks were not always as reliable as we know them today. Bad last mile was common. Cross-talks even in cables connecting CO's, inadequate capacity. Long distance was horrible. Quality was the major disadvantage, but people wanted to talk to each other. The alternative way was sending paper letters..

Digital era and fiber-optic transport systems made possible digital telephony. ISDN was born as an universal way to send any known types of information: voice, images, video, raw data on-demand. End-user could establish different sessions controlled by equipment in the CO, what guaranteed adequate admission and capacity control. The disadvantage was limited set of services and no networking. I'm not even saying about a price tag.

Lots of IP networks today built on top of TDM networks. If you have an Internet T1 connection, don't be surprised that it is a TDM link. Very often it can be shared between digital telephony and Internet (data), sometimes even dynamically, which has nothing in common with VoIP.

Finally VoIP... Generally Voice over IP is not Voice over public Internet. There is a large class of VoIP solutions where telephony is being delivered to the customer over his Internet connection. Typical example is all sorts of combo packages from Internet service providers. In most cases ATA adapter is integrated into CPE (customer premises equipment) router and voice will never even cross your office or home network. In this situation adequate bandwidth will be allocated for every call. This service providers will never allow you to exceed capacity of the connection. On the provider's side VoIP will be separated from the rest of the Internet traffic and directed to the traditional telephony network or delivered to another gateway for long distance calls in controlled environment. In many cases it is more reliable then TDM. In TDM or analog world in case of one failed link the whole circuit will be destroyed and call will be dropped. In case of IP the network may converge to different route without even loosing a single packet or user's terminal may temporary loose contact with VoIP control server and still be able to communicate with the remote party, so end-user will not even know about this event.

The disadvantage of high quality VoIP is still the price tag. In many cases you will not see dramatic savings because of substantial investment into VoIP capable network equipment. Service provider will charge a premium for capacity and admission control, priority delivery of voice traffic over the rest of IP traffic and additional CPE equipment. Lots of this charges are hidden in subscription fees, others are a separate line in a bill.

Cheap Internet telephony is not using or not enforcing any capacity or reliability policies. Uses public Internet transport and cannot guaranty anything which is not acceptable for a business grade users. In many cases standard PC is being used as a terminal, which was never designed for telephony applicatins and creates all sorts of issues including echo.

The bottom line is properly provisioned VoIP will work the same or better then traditional digital telephony. And nobody will even try to compare it with old analog systems.

Karen - There really is alot of good information listed here on this topic. Certainly addressing the mechanics of this technology...bandwith, service providers, equipment redundancy, cost of ownership, return on investment, implementation - all excellent points. There is something I don't see detailed in these comments/feedback, and that is the unified communications technology, as well as training staff. With using the public telephone network...say the company simply purchases new phones... there really isn't that much training involved - I would even think that most people are able to figure out its functions without any training. With VoiP phones, it is a different way of thinking. For example, setting up WHERE the call(s) come in. At the receptionist desk of course, right? Well, yes...but in small businesses there is usually several people helping out with the phones. Or even, sometimes a call is transferred to "the sales department"....not just to somebody's desk. These things all have to be considered, and configured to ring WHERE you want, WHEN you want.

Concerning unified communications, where I mentioned earlier, this is managed by a web interface. Call history, call forward settings, contact directory, etc... There is training involved in teaching your staff how to use this interface. WHEN everything works the way it is designed, it is absolutely wonderful. Now, keep in mind... the presentation you are given from some marketing department... the technology IS going to work. That doesn't mean when you have it up and running at your place of business that all these functions are going to work properly. The old rule of thumb in any new technology...ironing out the the gremlins in the system can be time consuming and frustrating. Another rule of thumb - TEST, TEST, TEST, TEST. And don't just test FROM a VoiP system, test from an analog phone and cell phone (from different carriers if possible) as well... (you will have to keep your analog fax line -more than likely - so you can just plug in an analog phone and use that for testing). Test ALL the extensions with different scenarios of call forward settings.

I think it is very smart to try and 'turn over the shiny rocks' to see what lingers beneath when it comes to technology. We can get wowed over the coolness of technology...but as I am quickly reminded of...not everyone in the company cares why or why not and/or HOW technology works - they just need it to work so they can do their work.

A couple more points to consider - configuration of your switch. Do you have enough ports? Will you need another switch? Do you have the accurate configuration? Do you have voice and data separated?

And, now, my final comment on the gentlemen talking about the ECHO. Rarely have I heard an echo - and my staff has rarely reported this quality of service issue. We have experienced excellent voice quality - so much so that we have to be careful about 'heavy breathing'... LOL... We are those heavy breathers that you hear on the webcast(s)!! We definitely have to be conscious of how sensitive these phones are - conversations from across the room can even be heard.

Good luck with your decision.

Quality of service and response to issue can be huge.

If you are a small business and are looking for an inexpensive solution, there are companies out there offering hosted solution that do not have the organization size to back up the demands of what they are dealing with.

VoIP is a relatively complex solution that requires the marriage of your internet pipeline, the phone hardware, the providers software and no doubt numerous other background things I know nothing about.

As a small business and a small business focused CRM consultancy, about 18 months ago, we were wooed by a provider who also wanted us to work as a reseller since they had a 'solution' that (supposedly) integrated with one of the CRM systems we work with.

What a nightmare! Numerous outages, finger pointing, software module that never did work reliably. We had just a single phone with several voicemail boxes. The system did not work reliably in our tiny environment, so there was no way we could recommend to our clients. We pulled the plug on our system a couple of months ago.

Phone was great, everything else was not.

Well Karen, you asked a loaded question and now you have your hands full. Not much to add, but I will say that all the above-mentioned limitations of VoIP are only disadvantages if things aren't planned right or managed well.

In a perfect world - end-to-end IP - VoIP can achieve superior quality over TDM, and that sets the stage for cool things like HD audio conferencing. Of course, the world is less than perfect, so you're just as likely to have problems with VoIP that will make it look like a second-rate solution. Fair enough, but as others have noted, there's nothing here that good planning can't anticipate.

I'll just one other thing on that note. Probably the most important decision you can make is to choose a facilities-based provider or one that can ensure QoS. If you go with an OTT provider - over the top - like Vonage, you don't have that capability, and you will absolutely experience the kind of problems sooner or later that turn these limitations into disadvantages.

Make sure you have enough Internet Bandwidth because your phone systems will be running over the internet and no longer from your commercial service provider. If you don't have enough bandwidth you'll start to strain your internal data network and you'll see delays...which is never good in the business world. For the most part though, VoIP is a pretty safe upgrade.

Changing to VOIP also gives the problem of what to do with Fax traffic. If you go the FOIP route with servers, it is difficult to get the same results as analogue. FOIP through T38 generally gives a 8 out of 10 response. Can you afford to miss 20% of fax traffic which is generally mission critical ? eFax can solve that problem with their desktop product which works through the e-mail client. eFax Corporate comes in with the fax to e-mail solution, no hardware or software and 12 million people using it today. It is much cheaper than any server solution and configurable in 30 mins Globally. We have small clients with 10 users and Global organizations with 50,000. Its tried tested and proven and also Green !

My comment is framed within a commercial perspective of VoIP in the Latinamerican market --specifically Mexico: The disadvantage to VoIP is broadband service which is almost a Monopoly.

Current cost of a 4Mbps ADSL connection is US$77 plus 15% tax. This ADSL is never the theoretical 768Kbps in the uplink but 30% less (16 simultaneous VoIP calls using g.729 codecs). Moreover, the telecom monopoly makes very difficult to buy the ADSL service alone. It always tries to sell the ADSL service bundled with TDM minutes, discouraging customers to use VoIP.

On the other hand, dedicated symmetrical broadband access are not easily available below the 1Mbps which cost around US$650, and US$890 for a 2Mbps symmetrical pipe.

At the end of the day, the savings VoIP can offer could vanish by paying the high-priced, not-very-reliable broadband service.

And lets not talk about regulatory issues...

That is a rather broad question... So much depends on your goals and uses. If using VoIP as part of a Web Conferencing solution the end users need a soundcard - that could be a disadvantage if your target audience does not have sound cards (assume VoIP over the computer). VoIP could be a disadvantage to someone that has limited bandwidth and they want to reserve the bandwidth for other activities that they feel are more important.

We installed and host our own VOIP system. Overall, a very good deal.

Cons include:

1. Infrastructure costs. Yet, we are a technology company so no regrets there.
2. You need to have specialized VOIP support. Usually this type of support is expensive.

The cons to IP Telephony are based on "What your business can tolerate." For example, because it is not uncommon for entire Trading firms to move to IPT and still have trading floors remain on proven TDM phones. At this time, you usually have to deal with turret systems that may not work on a VoIP system, though that is changing. Old don't always make it bad, and new don't always make it better! The business manager or floor trader is the best source for the truth to determine what risk is, and is not, tolerable to the business.

The disadvantage of VoiP -

Deployment - Traditional telephony companies such as BT owned/own their network and therefore have complete control of the service, end to end.

Should a fault develop BT have the engineers that are trained to fault THEIR network and the analytical tools to discover exactly where the fault may be found. With VoiP there are a number of areas that need to be regulated by the VoiP provider to ensure resilience and quality of speech:

1. LAN (Local Area Network)
2. WAN ( Wide Area Network)
3. ITSP ( Internet Telephony Service Provider)
4. ISP (Internet Service Provider)
5. IP PBX ( Telephony Equipment Itself)

Most providers will only take responsibility for a part of the solution, if any of the other areas fail it becomes a blame game, with the end user playing "piggy in the middle".

1. LAN - The LAN must be analyzed to ensure its suitability to carry VoiP traffic. For large deployments a "VoiP doctor" is installed on site that may analyze traffic proactively so that faults may be quickly determined should they occur.

2. WAN - ADSL (Broadband) have SLA's (service level agreements) of 24 hours plus. Can a business afford to be without communications for so long? Have resilience options been considered? Many SME businesses are only offered a single broadband connection as an option.

3/4. ITSP/ISP - What are the quality of these networks? - Does the provider have instant access to level 3 support in the event of a fault occurring?

5. IP PBX - Is this an open source variety such as AsteRISK that may have security vulnerabilities or a hardened IP PBX such as "Zultys"

SME's may retain some of their their existing lines (such as ISDN) so that calls may be routed via these circuits should Internet connectivity fail - This provides a mix of the old and new, providing better resilience than either on their own ...

VoiP is not simple. We at "500" are a team of VoiP/ Video conferencing experts that have the expertise and quality of partners to take "end to end" responsibility for our "Business-Grade" deployments.

I am Jonathan Rodwell, the business development manager for "500" - I would invite you to visit our website www.500.uk.com to become more informed prior to migrating from you existing system.

we use C3IP Communications business class VoIP solution integrated with ACT! 2010 (CRM) with 5 lines. cheaper than the old phone service and better than the nortel system we had before.

pro: take the phone with you wherever you go. plug in to your cable modem/router and it is just like you are in the office.

pro: software allows you to integrate with CRM applications so history is created on every call.

we love it and we resell it.

Sure there are disadvantages. The biggest gotcha would be that your voice travels on the company data network. If the data network crashes then your company has no voice or data capability until it is restored... so imagine.. no email service, no call centre, no switchboard, no voicemail, no intranet. That is why some companies have considered installing parallel networks.. one for VOIP and one for data. All depends how mission critical your voice service is.

Good overview I wrote on the subject last year - basic info that recaps much of what has been said here.

http://www.business-voip-phone-service.com/voip-faq.html

There are some very good reasons to install VoIP technology. That being said, if the IP based system is running on your network, think about which crashes more often...your network or your stand-alone legacy phone system. This can be an issue and the business that standardizes on VoIP needs to take this into consideration.

Network "crash" should not be considered as disadvantage of VoIP. Properly designed and maintained network will work trouble free for years. I have some network segments with over 4 years of uptime. No maintenance, no outages, no reboots.
Regarding staff training. Yes, it is important component when implementing new technology with some advanced features. There might be even some internal resistance or sabotage. And if someone will hear anything which will sound like echo, everybody will repeat that it is horrible and new system is completely unusable. I have seen this when people were switching from a primitive key system to a full blown VoIP PBX. It was convinient for them to shout at each other to "transfer" calls and a computer powered operator console was something new and scary.

Hosted IP PBX is ideal for small- and medium-sized organizations with minimal IT resources and budget that want the features and functionality of a powerful IP system—such as standard calling features, Unified Messaging, as well as other advanced features—without the price tag that comes with it.

The key term here is "organizations with minimal IT resource". A Hosted VoIP phone system gives you as much telecommunications technology as you want and you don't have to worry about managing the infrastructure of the system.

There are a lot of features that VoIP makes possible. Here are a few

You can set up a Virtual Call Center consisting of home based workers that are located in any geographic location. The only hardware required will be the USB headsets for each agent (available at any office supply store). With a Hosted VoIP Call Center you can add or remove agents as needed, through the providers VoIP Web Portal.

You can have a single receptionist answer the phones for all your employees regardless of geographic location. This receptionist can even be a home based worker.

You can use a Hunt Group to simultaneously ring multiple phones in multiple locations. Companies use this for a dispersed tech support group.

These are just a few of the benefits of VoIP

As long as your local area network is IP ready, then the simple (and very short) answer is no!

There are quite a few answers to this question, but I'd have to agree most with Richard P - as long as you have a solid network infrastructure then you should have no problems (and ultimately, no disadvantages) to VoIP. I'd strongly recommend talking with your IT manager to make sure your network could handle the bandwidth increase, and then take several demos from different VoIP providers to compare. Have patience - you'll find a system that works for you!

Yes of course there are disadvantages. Not sure what has been mentioned already but here's what on top of my head.

Most has no 911 feature
Internet and power dependent
Quality is still not as good as landline
Need setting up
Not as reliable as landline

I can live with all of that if I can save half of my long distance cost which is why I am using VoIP for all my long distance calls. I've been using Onesuite for 3 years now and I really can not complain because I'm saving $$$ monthly versus when using local phone provider for my long distance calls.

Check out http://www.solicall.com/blog/?p=53 for blog discussion on echo in VoIP

There are only two reasons to buy an IP-PBX product or service
1. To reduce opex costs e.g. PBX rental/maintenance, call costs
2. New features e.g. voice mail, multimedia, CRM etc
It is unlikely that you can do both at the same time!
Andrew Beresford
http://www.voice-vpn.com

are there any DISADVANTAGES TO VOIP? Of course. I have no
positive things to say about it. AS I have been involved with computers
for 40 yrs [yes, way before windows and the internet], I was
around when VOIP was first introduced. I had chats with other VOIP
users and we all came to the same, friendly, instant conclusion; if you
want free calls [some software exists to provide free VOIP] and you don't mind ECHOs in your phone calls, use it. I personally HATE
ECHOS in my phone calls and thus, I stopped our VOIP chats 5 yrs
ago. I also amaze many people when, shortly after they call me
or visa-versa, I ask them "are you using VOIP?" They ask
"how can you tell?" cause it ECHOs. That is annoying to me
but OBVIOUSLY not to thouands or millions of other people.