My customer is asking me to replace their switch telephone system that is not working well. Thoughts?

John, SIP over public Internet is not reliable, there is no QOS protocol on the internet. BYOB will never be reliable when there is no QOS even on a 100 MB pipe, bandwidth does not matter when there is no QOS. that is just a blunder. John programming your switch and router for QOS means zippo when the Internet's routers don't prioritise it, again there is no QOS on the Internet. The only way to ensure that you get QOS is to use a point to point connection, otherwise quality( clarity, availability, dropped calls) is at risk.
John, you need to do some technical research and learn a bit about networks before you go blabbing sales lines that have no technical backup.

Steve, I'll answer the question for you. I'll use your numbers, and I'll take the average. let's look at $20 phones, 40 DID's and an A/A that is $850 per month, add and Internet connection T-1 $400 per month, your total expense is $1,250. 5 year cost is $75,000
CPE top of the line ShoreTel with 20 phones $12,000 monthly lease is for the first 5 years - $269, system management $95, Voice and data T-1 with 6,000 minutes $564. Total is $928 per month, more bells and whistles too. so that is $54,540 when you take out the 1st year free management and service. That is $20,460 less over five years, after which the eq. lease is paid and drops out making the monthly $659 versus $1250, this brings the 10 year savings to $55,920.
Now lets talk reliability. VoIP must have QOS protocol at every router or switch that the packets pass through. Since noone can control the Internet and there is no QOS on the public Internet, every call a hosted customer makes is risking loss packets and congestion and bad quality. Your hosted example uses IP over the Internet, An improovement would be a point to point connection or a private MPLS, and that will add $400 to $600 assumming your switch site is nearby, and on net for whatever carrier you use. There goes another $48,000 over 5 years. Perhaps customers that know this will keep the 48000 and suffer through ocaisional bad calls. WHen there is a problem with a call you can call your hosted provider, cause they manage everything right? wrong they tell you to use your own internet connection and that the reason you have a bad call is because of the Internet. In fact look at Ring Central's website under support. They tell you not to download big files while on a call!
OK so now we can see how CPE has management and price advantages. What about redundancy? Hosted connects through a single Internet connection, Can we get a second backup conenction to the customer site? not without CPE you can't some hosted providers will rent you the CPE, then you can pay for a few backup pots lines also at about $25 per line, hmmm, starting to look like a CPE solution now, why rent it from them? With hosted I have to buy 2 expensive Cisco roruters running BGP and pay for two monthly Internet connections, who manages that, what happens when those routers need a looking at, who manages that, the hosted provider, (doubt it) MY CPE solution is cheaper, easier to manage, and I can take the extra money that I save and buy a redundent off site switch for about $1500 ($33 lease), there are many other redundent conenctions and configurations that I can use, none of which are available with hosted telephony. The other worry is that most hosted providers, (all of them that are not carriers) are not regulated by FCC or state serivice commissions. As they are not carriers you don't own your phone numbers, the hosted provider does. so they have all your eggs in one basket, and you aren't free to shop for your voice carrier and data carrier and management company the way you are with CPE.
More resilliency, better uptime, more choise of management, and between 55k and 103k in your pocket over 10 years. Shall we do the math for 50 phones, 100 phones?

Denis, So it was you who invented the Internet! I thought it was Al Gore. I know my answer was correct 15 years ago, and it is correct today. Truth does not change 8k stream, 8 bit stream or 10 gig stream. If there is no QOS, there is no method for ensuring packets get through. By definition of QOS, without which packets are NOT prioritised, and there is no method to ensure any stream gets through with any timming If there is why don't you tell us what mechanism there is that guarentees it, instead of making a determination that stock brokers calls are more important than others, Let's let the customer determine how important his calls are. How pretentious a statement.

Well, for once anyway ;), I have to agree with Dave here. I don't think Denis has a firm grasp on what exactly QOS entails. QOS, by definition, sets traffic priorities and guarantees packet transmission by establishing requirements on all aspects of a connection...and is impossible on any best effort service. So, even though the Internet may have 'huge capacity', that has absolutely nothing to do with QOS.

Hi Louis,

I would have to agree with Dave. I have done many, many comparisons for my clients (Premise Based PBX, Hosted PBX, Premise Based w/ Managed Service, etc.) and Premise Based PBX has come out with a considerable lower TCO in as little as 3-5 years in every occasion.

My advice to you would be to speak to an Avaya Business Partner local in your area that can break out the Avaya rebate calculator and figure out what your upgrade cost would be. There are some very aggressive rebates from Avaya for upgrades of legacy systems. If this is a Partner ACS (which I suspect it is) you may be able to re-use the handsets and make it a much more cost effective solution than anything else out there.

As a former Church Elder, I understand the cost restraints on a Church. You don't have to spend very much for such a few amount of phones.

Good luck and Best Wishes,

Derek Roush

We will need to know a few things. How many handsets, how many outside lines. Are they looking for basic telephony? Do they have any special functions such as outbound TM campaigns, inbound religous support? Do users need to be reached when they are not at their desks? IE mobile workers, priests or religous leaders available for consultation at various times, like shiftwork. What is the call flow like and why do people call in, should there be a work group or call center to handle this? Open up a bit and share some information. And you'll get some good suggestions that will help lead you to a solution.

Dave, your point is very interesting since I am a former Vz employee (recently retire from Optical Networks Development). I am an independent consultant and looking to save my client (church) from 6 lines they posses and a PBX system (no monthly bills to pay for this system) that is outdated, unsupported, and falling apart.
Here is the scenario on my client- school and church uses same PBX system: 1) school- secretary and the principal can take calls, let them go to voice-mail, and can call teachers at 9 different classrooms (teachers don't get dial-tone for making outside calls). They also connect with the church. 2) the church- the priest has 2 lines, his secretary has her line and can pick up the priest's lines. She also has a fax line to fax contracts to the community when renting out the community room. Now, I am adding more lines telephone lines to 3 separate rooms; somehow they all share 6 POTS lines from the telco plus DSL. They would like for the new system be able to go to voicemail, do call forwarding, do not disturb, etc. I want to be able of reusing the same telco lines to every office that currently are in use of these lines and just remove old PBX and install/program the new system. They want to cut down on their tel cost- right now they pay close to $600 in telephone service and the PBX system from Avaya- is paid for but pay a monthly service contract of $50 on 3 telephone sets. You think they can do better? let me know. If service is great, I can offer same to other clients looking to reduce their cost.

My company uses a hosted voip sip solution in house for about 400 users and I have seen a just few reliability issues. For the most part it works fine. We sell it using cisco and polycom handsets (I don't sell it personally, I sell dark fiber solutions for a different division) and I've been impressed with the remote worker features.

Louis, this is a very generous offer from Denis. You won't have reliable calls as this model sends calls over the Internet. Since there is no QOS on ther Internet, It breaks the acceptable standards of QOS on VoIP.
If AIST is not recognized as a carrier by the FCC and PSC of their state, you will have to give up all legal rights to your phone numbers, they will have to be ported to their carrier, and they will own them.
It's worth the price, nothing. Why not just use Magic Jack for that matter?

Rachel,

I would be glad to sit down with them and see if what they had can be fixed. I would then look at savings and justification for a IP-PBX or a hosted system. I maybe able to do SIP trunks through there existing switch giving them the savings and when they can afford a system povide them one.

Hi denis, pay attention, and you will learn something. I think the explaining needs to be done to you, not everybody, certainly not Mark and I. Mark has clearly stated what QOS is, so I won't repeat it again. MPLS can deliver real time applications when it is carried over a private non-shared infrastructure. In that case, the term MPLS VPN is redundent and makes no sense. MPLS over a private network is controlled by the owner of the network, therefore private delivery and QOS with known latency is now empirical data, not a guess. MPLS is not a public swimming pool where one has no idea as to how many people will be swimming. MPLS provides a reugulated number of swimmers and the owner can determine who get' what lane, thereforre we know how long it takes to get accross the pool. It also makes a pool a bit more secure. Banks have a few regulations you know,
take a look here denis;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service

I want to thank all responders to my client's request for telephone service. I have received an overwhelming amount of replies and telephone calls- I need to go thru all of them carefully since I want to be able to provide my client with best approach. and, here I thought that VoIP was going to be easier to implement but, I hear you and respect all your comments and recommendations. I'm gonna be going away for a few days (college hunting this week) and hope to find time to check all your recommendations for making a selection before school starts in September to avoid any disruption in telephone service.
Derek- yes, it's a Partner ACS which support for it is too expensive and the church don't have to funds to repair it or buy a new system- unless I can show what the new system can do and save them down the road. It's tough to deal with a client like this but I figure- I will rewarded later- so, my services are pro-bono.

Louis, Avaya IP Office 500 Pertner version, keep the handsets and re-use them. shop and you will fins that is your least expensive alternative. also shop fro carrier service. A reseller of local LEC with unlimited local minutes. I'm guessing a church doesn't call LD much. Shop your carrier service seperate.
1 700476005 IPO IP500v2 CONTROL UNIT
1 700479728 IPO SYSTEM SD CARD PARTNER
1 700289770 IP400 POWER LEAD (EARTHED)USA
1 700430150 IPO IP500 WALL MNTG KIT
1 700476039 IPO IP500v2 ETR6 CARD
1 700417405 IPO IP500 TRNK ANLG 4 UNI
this will cost you ($1,400 ish or less?) plus installation services, carrier line cost will vary by location. Hwere is the church?

Interesting on the Fonality observations... I wonder if it has a lot to do with location. I have been working in the LA county which is very similar in population size and we have been brought in to support about a dozen Fonality and installed several. I agree with you on the Avaya solution and on working with carriers as it pertains to SIP or any other protocol. What I meant in my previous comment was that Fonality support has always been very gracious about not passing blame on the carrier when troubleshooting issues. Louis I hope you find the right solution and if you can save some money by reusing phones great.

Btw, Shanghai is the largest city on the planet

Well, Louis, you asked for help and you got it. Now you have a whole bunch of pitches to sift through. I don't envy you, but it comes with the territory. At some point, you'd better get some vendor-neutral perspectives unless you feel comfortable assessing these on your own. If you haven't reviewed industry buyers guides - like the ones that Focus produces, you should do that.

All I can say is that you can get IP phones for under $100 apiece, so it won't cost much to replace the phone system. For the PSTN lines, I'd suggest using the minimum and put the rest over your broadband service using VoIP. Bottom line, you shouldn't have to spend to much to maintain the status quo, and in fact, you'll like reduce your monthly telecom spend by shifting some lines over to VoIP.

There are many companies and providers that offers good phone systems, with dofferent features and benefits, like for example, Ringcentral, grasshopper, virtualpbx and lot more to choose from. If you want, you can browse through the internet and search for phone system providers/companies that you think can provide you a better phone system..

One thing that Broadview Networks can offer them is an industry leading Hosted IP Solutions dubbed "Office Suite." What would make it appealing to your customer besides the transparency it offers is the monetary savings they would incur by going with Broadview's flagship product. In the long run, our Office Suite product will cut down on the costs for updates since all new technology is added remotely to the system. On top of that the cost for maintenance, repair and troubleshooting that a business would incur dealing with an "old-school," PBX system would be almost non-existent. 90% of repairs, maintenance and standard troubleshooting are done on our end via our system- no physical technician is required. Finally, we can set-up and install the new system over the customer's current broadband ie: B.Y.O.B.- bring your own broadband. This essentially will allow for an easy transition into VoIP without further installation of circuits and most importantly any extra unneeded costs. Please feel free to reach out to to me at degan@broadviewnet.com or via LinkedIn. I'd be more than happy to speak and send you a proposal. Have a wonderful nightl!
Best,

Daniel Egan
Account Executive II, Solutions Engineering
Broadview Networks

I have a church customer in Hempstead Long Island with aboout the same scenario, , and the they have a few more than 3 phones, that is a small amount of phones for a church and a school, you have no more than three phone instruments between the school and the church? feel free to call me 212 592 9359. Basic telephone system with 3 phones would cost less than 4k, if you can find a lease company that will lease that small amount you would still need a service contract. The lowest I can do is $600 per year for service whcih is free for the first year with a new system. Some savings could come from reducing the spend on your phone lines, this could help you justify the cost of new equipment. Call me I can probably help you.

I like hosted voice,and don't think is has to be more expensive. Line rental may be more, but call charges should dropping in the region of 20% using a good sip carrier. That normnally off sets any cost differnces. BYOB can work very well if you have te bandwidth in the firstplace, and can program the switch with the quality of service. It depends on the network you have installed. If you have bought a business network then that should be quite doable by your networek provider. Ask each sip provider that you talk to whether they 'peer' with your business network provider. That mean that you aren't putting the internet between your phones/headsets and the hosted voice system.

Other advise. Althoug tempting avoid Skype, it absolutely doesn't peer with your network and will cause you problems. Don;t let the sip provider charge you for soft phones. I also don;t like Cisco phones very much, they need very specific hardware at the SIP carrier end.

In the UK, go and talk to Zantra Communications. they have some very good arrangements that include UC. They are connecting voice to Vostron. Or go and talk to Mittel. They have some very good hoisted voice and hybrid systems on offer.

Not sure in the US, but you could talk to Presence Networks - they are a UK company that provides tech to Vostron and Zantra who do re-sell in the US.

Please note I don't work for any of the above companies.

Ring Central is very expensive and very risky, and they are not set up correctly for quality phone calls. they use bring your own bandwidth and no QOS protocols as well.
They even warn you about their quality sacrifice right on their own support page, take a look here
http://www.ringcentral.com/support/qos-information.html

they say;
"Pause any large downloads while on a call.

You may experience delays or dropped calls if you’re downloading large files over the same network you use to make calls. Your Internet connection may not have enough bandwidth to handle the increased load. Pause any non-essential downloads before making a call."
why would you pay more money, and get low quality by using hosted instead of putting equipment onsite.
I just saved a 50 phone user customer over $56,000 over ten years, 20k over five years by not using Ring Central.
Come on now! Cann accounting, I can save you the money too. 212 592 9359

Steve, the remote worker features are available with every telephony solution, I use them quite heavily, they really help you keep in touch on your terms. The reliability issues are only available with hosted over the Internet, along with the high cost. This can be sold by slick salesmen with shiney ties and high close ratio's, to customers who are uninformed and unwilling to do some research on their own. That's why Focus and other sources help.

If you have a T1 or above connection (which you should), and are on a tight budget for spending cash, do yourself a favor and go hosted...don't spend a lot of money a used or refurb system and buy someone else's headaches. In today's market you can go with a hosted setup with NO up front cost at all...absolutely no cash outlay for a brand new phone system with all the bells and whistles...and I mean all the bells and whistles. This will cost you $12-20 per line, plus $12-20 per phone, depending on what company you use and you will have the option to include unlimited domestic long distance (maybe $20-30 a month) or a package that includes a certain number of LD minutes per month, say 5000-10,000 minutes. You'll usually get installation free, with free in-house training and support included. You can add DID's for probably another $10 for a block of 20 and an auto-attendant for maybe $10-15. You automatically get a smorgasbord of calling features including items like 'find-me-follow-me' and four digit dialing between extensions.

So, the question is, why would you spend thousands of dollars up front on a PBX that will be obsolete in a few years when you can get a cutting edge virtual PBX, with everything you want included, for no money down and $12-15 a month per line, including all maintenance and support? Today, it's the way to go. ..and almost every telecom company out there will have this product...just make sure you go with a reputable provider with a strong fiber network so you have QOS. Hosted is the future in telephony, in every sense. Heck, it's like getting collocation services for free, without having to manage the collocation equipment.

Anyway, check out a hosted solution and I'm sure you'll be happy.

Dear “QOS” gurus,

Of course, you are free to say anything you like (well, almost)... I don’t see the point in arguing with you.

From your comments, people can see that you wanted to talk about “QOS” (or, perhaps, you actually wanted to talk about QoS, DSCP, TOS, MPLS CoS, network resources capacity dimensioning or something else....), well you did say what you wanted.

However, if you really want to be useful in this discussion, perhaps, you could actually explain to everybody why do the banks are using expensive MPLS VPN Telco services for voice and real time data traffic, and millions of people around the globe are enjoying the free high quality Voice and Video calls and multimedia content over the Internet?

Louis, I have a perfect solution for a small business. We have a VOIP phone system that we install, it is very inexpensive, provides QOS, no seat licenses, etc. customers save about 60% compared to there exsisting cost and even when they tie it into a leases they are still saving money.

You can contact me at: dwilkey@closepointcom.com

Dan Wilkey
Close Point Communications

I would take a serious look at Fonality as they offer a hybrid solution. I would also take Dave Hirsch's advise and shop carrier service separate... in fact I would shop the carrier services first as depending on your location you may not have very many options and that may factor on which PBX solutions have been tested and certified with the carrier. If the carrier has not been tested or certified look to pair carrier with PBX that is certified even if it means look at another solution.

Fonality is a piece of telephony software that runs on a PC. You will need a guy that is real good with it for your ongoing programming changes and repairs. since this system hardly sells anywhere it will be tough to find someone. If you do, they will move on to other more succesfull systems and you will be left withot world class support like Avaya can offer. typicaly Fonality install is remote support. You basicly do it yourself. I don' tthink a churh wants to get involved with that. there is also no over head page available if you need that.

Wow, first while it is software their support is great. If paging is a requirement though I would advise looking elsewhere. I see you are very sold on Avaya which is a great solution though saying that Fonality hardly sells is a rather bold statement and I would love to see some documentation to support it not being very popular. The reason I recommend it is because of the options for running in hybrid mode and it has a ton of support with different carriers. Fonality will work with the carriers if there are problems in SIP hand offs etc. WIth the recent merger of Covad and Speakeasy I know they offer unlimited SIP trunks that may also work with the avaya solution at around 39/mo for unlimited calling.

try bandtel for about $20. I work in NYC for the past 16 years, configuring and selling voice and data networks. I have not on a single occasion competed against fonality, nor have I had a single customer of mine ask me about it. in 2008 Fonality had employed 20 engineers. How many customers do they support? No I have no data on their market share. just an observation from a dealer in the largest city on the planet. I am an Avaya dealer. It is definaltely not a fit for all. It is very cheap for small offices, whhich is why I did not recomend it untill it was displayed that the church already owns the partner phones that will work with it. that means the employees won't have to learn new features because all the partner features are brought forward in the IP office 500 partner edition. it also puts them on a hardware platform that can take SIP trunks, and IP phones when they decide they want to . working with carriers on SIP implementation is mandatory, not a nice gesture. SIP is not a standard. Every carrier, and every box manufacturer uses a different set of RFC''s, so matching a box maker with a carrier is often difficult. A church without much of an IT staff will not want to be in the middle of that.

really? by what measure? I was reffering to economy

Just find a new vendor to maintain, repair, optimize the Partner ACS system. The current vendor does not WANT to maintain, repair and optimize it. Parts are readily available. Support should be inexpensive as those are pretty dependable systems. Find another vendor--preferable someone who specializes in maintenance rather than selling new systems.

If you really want to see support costs go through the roof, go for VoIP!

Shop the carrier services separately. If their monthly charges are high for those 6 lines, there are alternatives. Also, check to see if they are now month to month on some old high rate contract from the phone company. Lots of people bought Centrex as "cheap dial tone" 15 years ago and are now paying non-competitive rates.

Try ringcentral.com. I use that at my accouting firm. I'm also installing it at my clients daycare.

I recommend Open Source VoIP-Solutions, like Asterisk, to you

Best Regards

Dear Louis,

We've got what you need for free!

We would be delighted to provide to your customer a hosted Telecom service called OCM – Office Connections Manager free of charge in form of a charity contribution.

It's very easy and fun to use, and I'm sure they will be able to set it up themselves without any special knowledge. The manual is easier than the one for a television set...

They will be able to use it from any place on Earth, not just from their premises, and, among other very useful things, they will be able to call each other, place external and receive incoming calls independently from where the call origin or destination is located (assuming, it’s on the planet…:)).

N.B. The external calls may be charged at local call rates by a telephony gateway provider of the customer's choice. We can help to find the cheapest or free one for them. The incoming fixed line numbers can be setup to access the system in any part of the world at local rates.

All that is need to start using it is an Internet access and a computing device (with a handset / speaker and microphone), and/or a Smartphone.

This is easy!

Please get in touch with me on +17733605619.

You can read more about OCM on our website.

Thank you.

Kind Regards,

Denis Tokarevski
CEO
AIST Ltd.
www.aistnetworks.com
denis.tokarevski@aistnetworks.com

Hi Dave,

We are one of the firms originated from Adastral Park http://atadastral.co.uk/ , and we are among those who built the Internet. Yor answer was correct 15 years ago. People need easy and effective solutions that work, and want to get rid of the old equipment that they can't manage, and today’s technology is there to enable this to happen. Besides, the today's huge Internet capacity is more than enough to carry 8kbps gsm voice streams around the globe without any issues. :) Please note, we are not talking about a bank or a stock exchange.... So, let's be honest here :0/

Louis,

It's a pure case I came across this thread originating from one of the professional Linked-in groups. If you decide to consider this offer, please get in touch with us directly. We shall make sure that you'll be happy with what you get! I shall not be posting any more comments on this thread due to the time constraints. Thank you!

Try Star2Star.com We sell a lot of these and it is very reliable!