At the shop, we are currently paying around $80/month for very basic business phone service. I just received a phone call from a representative for a VOIP phone service called Ooma, and it sounded very appealing. I would love to hear from actual users of VOIP service to see how you like it. FWIW, we have 15 mb fiber internet at the shop.
Anyone have any experience with VOIP phone service?
- Thread starter JoshH
- Start date
My parents & brother use Ooma home service at their houses. It relies on your internet, so you need a dead reliable connection. If your internet drops or slows down, your call drops or distorts. Fiber internet should work great for it, just make sure you set it up to have priority so if all your PCs start updating it doesn't degrade your call quality.
I am 95% sure all our phone service at my work is VOIP on the backend, but it is an industrial grade setup that looks/acts like a normal phone on the desk, except for some reason I have 3 lines all with the same phone number
VOIP can be a great option, is what I am getting at. Just be sure your internet is 100% reliable first.
I am 95% sure all our phone service at my work is VOIP on the backend, but it is an industrial grade setup that looks/acts like a normal phone on the desk, except for some reason I have 3 lines all with the same phone number
VOIP can be a great option, is what I am getting at. Just be sure your internet is 100% reliable first.
I second what DAVe said.
I helped set up VOIP phone service at my previous job.
Our office manager set us up with 10mb fiber from AT&T and the VOIP service through 8x8. The phone service consistently dropped or had bad quality. I think it took between 4mb & 6mb on average. If there where two or more people on the phones we had issues
I then got approval from the owner to scrap the service and find what I felt was the best fit
I got us Comcast with 120mb down and 20mb up and their VOIP service. The VOIP service also used its own dedicated bandwidth so internet usage didn't have any effect on the call quality.
Never had any issues after that and it saved a few hundred dollars a month to boot.
I helped set up VOIP phone service at my previous job.
Our office manager set us up with 10mb fiber from AT&T and the VOIP service through 8x8. The phone service consistently dropped or had bad quality. I think it took between 4mb & 6mb on average. If there where two or more people on the phones we had issues
I then got approval from the owner to scrap the service and find what I felt was the best fit
I got us Comcast with 120mb down and 20mb up and their VOIP service. The VOIP service also used its own dedicated bandwidth so internet usage didn't have any effect on the call quality.
Never had any issues after that and it saved a few hundred dollars a month to boot.
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Josh, I used to setup small to huge VoIP networks around the globe some years ago.
For my personal businesses I've move from a hosted PBX server, to a managed PBX service, to a virtual PBX with call forwarding to our cell phones over the past 10yrs. Got my biz phone costs down to like $15 a month now, including a 800#.. https://www.evoice.com/
Things to consider:
1. Do you really need physical phones on site? If not, virtual PBX services work great. You can route calls directly to a group of cell #'s during business hours, and then to VM after hours. They also do stuff like email and txt you transcripts of messages in your box. Can even call back customers on your cell, but looks as coming from your office #. All dirt cheap.
If you need a phone or 10 on site, then a managed PBX service with SIP phones and trunking options is likely best fit. Bandwidth can be managed correctly using QOS options on your existing router, giving preference to VoIP packets or set to your phones Mac. Picking the correct voice Codec will allow you good call quality without needing any exta bandwidth. I stream video all day, and run 2 or 3 simultaneous VoIP over a junkass 5-mbps DSL connection, with proper QOS structuring.
Other things to keep in mind. You own your phone #'s for all general purposes. So "porting" any existing land lines to new phone company is your right. Same with 800's. So you can shop around, read reviews on virtual and managed PBX options out there. Last company I used was OK, www.phonepower.com Cost me about $29 a month for local NPA-NXX, and a 800# with like 60 minutes per month. Think I could do 2-3 outbounds lines on that plan. Customer support was pretty lame, but up time was good.
For under $50 a month, you can get a full scale PBX setup with all the bells and whistles.
For my personal businesses I've move from a hosted PBX server, to a managed PBX service, to a virtual PBX with call forwarding to our cell phones over the past 10yrs. Got my biz phone costs down to like $15 a month now, including a 800#.. https://www.evoice.com/
Things to consider:
1. Do you really need physical phones on site? If not, virtual PBX services work great. You can route calls directly to a group of cell #'s during business hours, and then to VM after hours. They also do stuff like email and txt you transcripts of messages in your box. Can even call back customers on your cell, but looks as coming from your office #. All dirt cheap.
If you need a phone or 10 on site, then a managed PBX service with SIP phones and trunking options is likely best fit. Bandwidth can be managed correctly using QOS options on your existing router, giving preference to VoIP packets or set to your phones Mac. Picking the correct voice Codec will allow you good call quality without needing any exta bandwidth. I stream video all day, and run 2 or 3 simultaneous VoIP over a junkass 5-mbps DSL connection, with proper QOS structuring.
Other things to keep in mind. You own your phone #'s for all general purposes. So "porting" any existing land lines to new phone company is your right. Same with 800's. So you can shop around, read reviews on virtual and managed PBX options out there. Last company I used was OK, www.phonepower.com Cost me about $29 a month for local NPA-NXX, and a 800# with like 60 minutes per month. Think I could do 2-3 outbounds lines on that plan. Customer support was pretty lame, but up time was good.
For under $50 a month, you can get a full scale PBX setup with all the bells and whistles.
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The options are cool but the call quality is iffy, I tried it but I'm wierd about echoes in phone conversations so I couldn't deal with voip...
We don’t have any echo when using it in Afghan calling to the states it’s almost better than normal cell quality.
I went ahead and set service up with Ooma. They don't have any contracts, so if I don't like it, I can cancel it. They offer a lot of really nice options such as a virtual receptionist, cell phone call forwarding, and a free 1-800 number. They say their service is compressed to take up less bandwidth, but we will see how well it works or if call quality suffers as a result. I'm hoping it works out because it is much cheaper than the regular land line we have now and has a lot of things that will make our phones work better for us.
Those are typically hardware configuration issues, and should been sorted out by the company providing service. All your cell phone traffic today is basically VoIP, but few complain about quality. Cause the big telco's control the network traffic end to end.
Beside the cool PBX options and nifty phone routing features, the biggest advantage to VoIP is audio compression. A plain old telephone line or POTS uses roughly 64kbps of bandwidth. VoIP codecs options range from G.711 (64kbps) to G.723 (5kbps) with G.729 (8kbps) providing best bang for buck and my personal favorite in quality. Good description of the Codec options in link below.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html
In the telcom world a hardwired T1 circuit contains 24 POTS @ 64kbps or 1544 kbps total bandwidth. If that T1 is IP configured to run only data no analog, then 1.5mbps can support max of 24 VoIP calls at G.711, or 300 VoIP calls running a 5kbps G.723 codec.
However G.723 is about one notch above a walki-talki.. For the service providers it's a money maker shooting traffic into 3rd world countries over satellite links for example. However not what our ears are accustom to, and can't even support a FAX machine.
Reason I bring all this up, these Codec are setup in your phones, and must match up to the IPBX on far end. It's a handshake arrangement where the PBX says I'd like to use G.723 and you phone can reply, "sorry I only accept G.729 or G.711 so pick one of those."
G.711 will always provide your best call quality, unless your kids hosting a gaming party on PS4, wife streaming Netflix, and your 15yr old DSL router is compromised by some hacker now using it to mine bitcoin in the background. Then ya end up hearing "Max Headroom" talking to ya during that important business call...
So it takes a bit of IT knowledge on the business end to make VoIP sound like a POTS all the time. But once ya verify internet bandwidth is good, use a decent router with QOS ability to set VoIP as priority over all other network traffic, you'll totally forget it's not a POTS line.
And BTW,, please support Net Neutrality through EFF NOW!! because if your big ISP's / ATT gets their way, all this current "end user" QOS ability goes out the window, and they can control / prioritize your IP packets by who pays them most $$$. Then all these little VoIP companies gonna get trashed when their call quality drops off because Netflix pays better, and ATT want's to sell you VoIP service ... The 20yrs break I took from turning wrenches, was spent developing all this stuff above, 8yrs for said ISP ^^....
So if your typing in incomplete sentences on here and it makes no sense, we know your on the phone with a customer? :rofl: