VOIP phone system for small office

GW

We have a traditional office phone system now, but looking to get more technical. I'm just now starting to see the merits in voip. Our internet is pretty rock solid here.

Can someone p[lease share some basic pros and cons, as you see them?

I am mostly interested in
--call recording
--hiding cell phone numbers, ID shows up as office number
--call forwarding to cell from office/rollover
--if it gets rolled over it would be nice to know that, is that possible?

I just googled, seems like Vonage and Ring Central are up there.

Thank you for any and all comments.

Gary

Sailah

We have Broadview Networks here. I like it. I'm not sure what the costs are.

The only cons are that very occasionally the phones will go dead. Happens 1-2 times a year. Usually resolved in an hour with Broadview. Other than that VOIP is awesome, so many benefits vs a traditional phone system. Especially since I go on the road often.

I am mostly interested in
--call recording-Yes as in voicemail? Not recording the actual phone call right because that's a wiretap issue.

Ours has a feature that automatically forwards you voicemails as an email attachment. Which. Is. Awesome. I don't press the buttons anymore on the phone I just double click the voicemail to listen to it. Very handy on the road too.

--hiding cell phone numbers, ID shows up as office number

Not sure what you mean by this. If you called me from your office, it would show up on my office phone as Wilson Services or your name. Mine won't show cell names though. Most people call me from a land line though.

You mean if I had the phones forwarded to my cell and I was on "office time". I call you at Wilson Services from my cell would you see Barnes & Jones on your caller ID or my cell number? I'm pretty sure it won't mask your cell number on the other side of the call. It might but I've never checked.

--call forwarding to cell from office/rollover

Ours has a web page that I log into using my extension and a PIN. I can set all my call forwarding options from anywhere including mobile. If I know I'll be unavailable for 6 hours I'll forward phones to my coworker. If I will be working from home I'll forward to my cell. Easy to do anywhere you have internet access. Which is handy if you're already out of the office.

--if it gets rolled over it would be nice to know that, is that possible?

You mean if I have the phones forwarded to me and I get a call on my cell will it show that its a forwarded call from the office vs someone actually calling my cell directly? I don't think it does. But I have all my work contacts saved in Outlook including phone numbers. Outlook on my phone automatically ported those over. So if I get a call from an FW Webb branch, my phone will say FW Webb Woburn calling but I don't know if it's forwarded vs a sales guy from the branch directly calling my cell.

KC_Jones

I use Vonage at my house. I can't comment about their business packages, but the service I have is fantastic. In addition to everything @Sailah said I will add to the call forwarding features. On Vonage it has a feature that will recognize if the phone is down and automatically forward to a phone of your choosing. If the power was out or the internet is down the call would automatically forward to your cell phone.

You can manage almost any feature on the system through a web interface. Getting calls you don't want (telemarketers etc.) just add them to a blocked call list.

You can have it automatically ring other numbers when your Vonage number is called, so in my case I could have it ring at home and my cell. I actually use this so I don't always have to hand out my cell number. I use the home number and when I am expecting a call I turn this feature on. I don't like giving out my cell number.

I also agree the voicemail being sent through email is an awesome feature. The Vonage will even turn the voice to text so you can read it or listen.

I am sure there is more stuff, but that is what I am familiar with.

adambnyc

I ditched vonage. It costs way too much for what it is. I switched to OOMA and also ported my business line to google voice. Between the two services, you should have most, if not all the features you need. Probably cost you around 3 bucks a month for the ooma service and google is free. OOMA also has a business class service with more features.

BobC

@adambnyc I've used OOMA at my house for a couple of years now, no problems and my phone bill is $3.70 a month.

Bob

GW

Thanks for the comments

Call recording... yes as long as you say your recording, just about all larger businesses have an auto attendant that says," this call may be recorded for training for quality control purposes". Outgoing is a different matter.

I spoke with Vonage today, it's certainly more costly than Ooma

Thanks, Gary

margsuarez

third for ooma - i've been using it at home for 10 years or so and it works great for just the price of the FCC taxes, as stated above. they have an affordable plan to add fancier features likeCaller ID (~$12).

RayWohlfarth

We just cut the cord with Verizon after doubling our costs and went with Ooma. We used them in conjunction with verizon for almost a year and no issues. The other benefit we get is no more calls offering us the front page of Google. We would get 10-15 of those a day

Abracadabra

another vote for ooma and google voice.

GW

Does Ooma do small business? Multiple calls at the same time?

Abracadabra

http://www.ooma.com/business/
http://support.ooma.com/office/adding-additional-phone-numbers

Yes, multiple lines/multiple calls

If you are tech savvy you can easily integrate multiple google voice numbers with ooma.

stonehouse

Some perspectives from an "IT Guy" (aka The Wire Nut). I am always hesitant to recommend VOIP to my clients unless you have extremely reliable high-speed (50 - 100mbs) internet with low latency (sorry for the tech talk) - (if you can get FIOS, we've had good luck with that) - and know how to isolate your VOIP traffic from all the other "noise" on your network (like browsing, streaming, social media, etc.). This is going to require a good router and switches, a great firewall and the know how on how to isolate traffic types and prioritize the VOIP traffic. Be aware too, that if your internet goes down, you've lost all communications, voice, email, fax. You could arrange to have the traffic fall back to your cell phone instead.

Don't forget too, that paying per month/per phone can add up quickly!

I talk to a lot of major tech companies that use VOIP through fast and redundant circuits with top notch interface equipment and the quality can still be poor. One downstream overwhelmed router can foul you up by adding delays or dropped "packets". All of which won't bother your YouTube cat video viewing but the ears are very sensitive and will notice these issues.

Call me old fashioned but for smaller systems I still like good old copper "POTS" lines. Many telcos can offer all sorts of services like voice mail and auto-attendants, etc. Used to be called "Centrex" in the not to distant past.

There are also some very good inexpensive systems out there. ATT has the SYN248 series (about $200 for the system + phones, check Amazon) and NEC (check out http://www.necsl1100distributors.com/) among others. These systems generally take in POTS lines (or other type lines) and connect to VOIP phones. We've done both systems for clients and they are simple to setup and use. The NEC guys linked above will program the whole system for you and walk you through the setup.

For larger offices, there are also "PRI" lines to a traditional phone system. This gives you 23 "talk paths" on one digital line with unlimited numbers (though you pay a small fee for blocks of numbers). This is obviously more expensive and losing the one line will take down all your calls, unless you have backup lines which add more expense. Cost/benefit ratio based on how critical your communications are.

That being said, depending on the size of your business, you could certainly do it all (except fax) on cell phones. You lose the ability to do a number of things, like transfer calls, and auto-attendant, but, again, these are things that are not always necessary.

Lots of options these days, but, as with all things, be careful of what seems cheap up front, take the time to investigate and understand. As with life, poor communications can ruin your day!

Sorry for the excess verbiage but I hope that helps. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

GW

Wow yes that's a bit above my pay grade! I'd be grateful to seek further advise, I'll message you when I have more questions thanks

adambnyc

The OOMA gateway is recommended to act as the router. Personally i never like having anyone else's router other than my own handling everything that a router handles but, the OOMA gateway will automatically QoS the voip packets.

This is nothing that I haven't done myself already in my Fios router. I hate that I have to use their weird actiontec with the limited ARP table, but they have gotten better in recent years. You can prioritize voip within the actiontec.

Any decent consumer grade router today usually has those features I find. I don't know if it's exactly 802.1p or some home brewed solution but it does seam to work.

GW, if your office has multiple people in it, sharing bandwidth with voip phones, then your probably looking for trouble. If it's only you in the office, then I don't think your gonna have a problem.

GW

We have one full time and one part time girl. We have more phones than employee. I downsized after our building was designed and built. It's certainly possible for 3, maybe 4 calls to happen simultaneously (although rare).

So my internet speed seems sketchy, I did a random website speed check and it showed about 20mbps download and 3 upload. We have Comcast cable for business. Does that seem right?

adambnyc

20 down, 3 up on a business class line isn't unheard of. But you don't have a lot of bandwidth at your disposal. I'm gonna recommend that you shy away from consumer grade voip.

Networking and bandwidth is exactly like plumbing. That's why we refer to network connections commonly as "pipes" in the IT industry. The 20Mbit down is small by today's standards. The 3mbit up is also small. You can think of both of these as a pipe diameters.

While a voip takes up relatively a small amount of pipe, it's very latency sensitive. it's like trying to empty a sink into a 2" main that is already completely full. That sink will drain, but it will drain slowly.

Now when your downloading a file and the pipe is saturated, this will simply cause your download times to extend. When your on a voip call, this will look like delayed and garbled sound and diminished quality.

Overall my concern is about multiple people using the internet on a small pipe while your trying to talk. It's asking for trouble if not done correctly. Like @stonehouse said, you would need QoS (quality of service) for the voip packets. QoS in plumbers terms, back to that sink... pipe is saturated, you go and empty the sink, all other water slows down and your sink drains like the 2" main was empty.

The girl in your office could be browsing the web, sending an email, watching a video or streaming some music. All of this would effect your voip call.

Stone head hit the nail on the head with his info. I incorrectly assumed it was a home office like mine. I have 100/100 fios and have no issues.

GW

Does Comcast have faster options? Our bill says High Speed Internet $89.

adambnyc

Faster options usually depends on your location but most of the time, yes. If you still wanna give voip a shot, at a minimum, we need to setup QoS for the Voip service.

Before even upgrading the speed of your line, try voip and let's setup QoS and see how we do. I'd be happy to help. I need to know what router/model number you are using in the office to ensure it has QoS capability.

GW

So QoS is a process? You "do something" to it?

adambnyc

It's a setting inside the router. Every communication from your computer happens over a certain "port". Port numbers range from 1 to 65535. For example HTTP is port 80 (http is what we browse web sites over).

Voip packets have a specific port number that your service provider picked. We look up which port(s) they are using and ensure that those packets which are communicating on those ports have priority over all other communications going on in the network.

This is theory, will improve the performance. However, there is still an issue. A fully saturated WAN pipe will increase in latency and may still impact performance. We would have to test and see.

The other option would be replacing your router with the ooma router, which would automatically do this, but I'm not real big on that idea.

GW

Ok I'll set the model etc thanks

stonehouse

Thanks @adambnyc, your input is right on the money and you certainly explain it clearly. @GW, any internet service over coax or a regular copper line (like DSL) will not work well. These lines tend to be oversubscribed (shared between too many customers) and have too many drops and latency (time for a data packet to get from point A to for quality voice service. As I mentioned the ear is very sensitive to drops and echo. You'll need service over a fiber optic line, like AdamB has, to be able to use VOIP. FIOS is one option, if you can get it. Other carriers may offer it, but do stay away from "consumer grade" service, it's made for watching Netflix and cat videos, and the occasional Facetime, not conducting business on several calls at the same time.

For 3 or 4 lines, you may want to stick with POTS (plain old telephone service) lines, and a set if inexpensive multi-line phones or the small systems I noted above.

AdamB, what do you do in real life?

adambnyc

@stonehouse I've worn quite a few different IT hats throughout my career, but I'm a computer systems engineer currently specializing in virtualization. I work for VMware. Yourself?