Someone is trying to sell me on voice over ip service because I use broad band...my business is very dependent on my phone lines and internet...has anyone had experience with this type phone service? Thanks in advance

At some point in time, part of most calls may be partially VOIP.  That is because, once the call gets into the carriers network you may not know what they will do with it.  This will come as the technology continues to evolve and it becomes cheaper for the phone companies to implement VOIP hardware than to put in other types of switching equipment.  AT&T recently announced that they were phasing out there residential service but that they are making a new charge at VOIP.  

Some large companies are phasing in VOIP so when you call them you may be on a VOIP call without even knowing it.  The one thing you have to consider as a small company, when the power goes out so does your phone service unless you have some kind of backup power.  This doesn't happen with a standard analog line unless you have a digital cordless phone.

Voip is a nice set up.  Make sure you have a minimum T1 connection set up to your phone board or else you will pay to have it installed.

Voip is very effective if you want to partition the T1 then use say half for data the other half for phone.  (I believe it's 20 lines per T1 so you will have 10 phone lines + 1/2 a T1 connection for uploads/downloads.)  

The nice set up I am considering is placing a server on the partition T1 then with a second server handling all VOX/VOX Mail and such and integrating that with our contact software.  Nice part is unit cost can be low if you can find a centrex style set up.  I think initial cost is around $12,000 but then again we are talking numbers that are around 3-5 mos old.  May be cheaper now.  The benefit is that your phone lines are basically data lines you do get the benefit of cheaper VOIP to VOIP calls.  I believe they are local calls compared to LD.  VOIP to standard phones will be Inter/Intra state charges so be careful what you wish for.  I beleive local phone calls are around $0.03 per min but dont quote me.  

Hope that helps man.

I have been using VOIP for over 1 year and have no problems so far. I recommend Vonage.

Is your business a home office, one person type shop? Or do you have employees and a small/medium size business? A broadband connection is typically a residential connection not something an entire company would run on.  

From a technology perspective VoIP is now ready for prime time. It's been around a while and people didn't leap right away, but the kinks are pretty much ironed out now.  VoIP is obviously bandwith dependant. Corporate America typically has the bandwith (T1, T3) connections to support VoIP. My company (Fortune 500 type company) switched us over to VoIP and nobody even knew the switch took place.

But if you a one person type home business running on a broadband connection your looking at residential type VoIP service. Vonage has been around a long time, but from what i can tell their pricing is equivalant to a regular phone service so I don't see the big deal in switching to VoIP. I don't claim to be have a truly educated opinion about residential voIP, so I may be wrong.

If the savings is worthwhile and you have a enough bandwith to support it, I wouldn't be afraid to switch.

... for my personal and business needs (small phone bank, about 4 phones) and it is a God-send.

I have had a great experience so far and the prices are really super.  Others have had mixed experiences, but I guess it depends on your needs and desires.

Just my opinion and I could be wrong.
Loarthan

but are the prices you pay cheaper than good old POTS lines?

A couple of major corrections in the above post:

A T-1 is equal to 24 voice lines.  You can carry 24 full quality 64 kbps voice calls over a single T-1 or seperate it out to 12 lines and 768 kbps data connection.  But this is NOT VoIP that is what is being talked about as of now.

VoIP is using a current internet connection (DSL, Cable Modem, or even T-1) to carry voice phone calls but sharing the internet traffic over a single internet connection.  In other words, the voice calls go over the same internet connection much like web pages, etc.

AT&T is selling this new service simply because it eliminates the "last mile" problem that they have.  They have to get into your house, and this means that they do not have to maintain any sort of connection to your location.

Another product like this is Vonage.

The thing to keep in mind is that all the calls go through your current internet connection, so if you connection is not realy good, you will have substandard phone calls.

A real nice thing though is that with this device, anywhere you have a higher speed internet connection, you have your current phone number.  For example I know people who bring their Vonage box with them when they travel, plug it into hotel ethernet high speed connections, and are able to make and receive phone calls on their phone number wherever they go.  This is kind of cool if you ask me.



-- Modified on 9/4/2004 10:36:12 PM