providers for phone line & internet
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I was under the impression that if you had a PBX that all of the phones talked to the PBX, and the PBX itself would handle the translation between the phones and the PRI / SIP trunk. The phones themselves would communicate to the PBX via IP or analog phone line or whatever, and the PBX would handle the rest.
Is my thinking wrong on this?
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
Yes it will be MUCH MUCH MUCH cheaper. Maybe about half or more than what we are paying right now. Still... Since NEC phone isn't support we will have to provide our own phone system.
- PBX are free. So that should be a none issue.
- Softphones are free. You can always go that route.
- Desk phones start around $80 if you want brand new hardware.
Even building from scratch, the only major cost of a new phone system is often just the optional handset costs.
Desk phones are not culturally optional, even if they are technically optional. Even then, soft phones may be free, but you still have to buy headsets. Any decent USB headset will be nearly $50
I've dealt with a number of places where it's the opposite, they demand softphones and feel desk phones are not an option.
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If you get SIP trunks from anyone other than your ISP you give up the ability to hold anyone accountable for call quality. Your ISP will blame the SIP trunk provider. The SIP trunk provider will blame the ISP. If you have a high level of bandwidth it may not be an issue, but no one will guarantee anything.
This is pretty much exactly the same garbage Comcast told us.
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@LAH3385 said:
In general, PRI is more reliable and has guaranteed call quality. You can get a PRI from any carrier that services your address and use it with the card you already have.
This is flat lying. And you don't have a PRI now, as you know, since you have a fiber connection and PRI by definition means copper. He's just making stuff up to make NEC not look like con artists.
SIP is every bit as reliable and can guarantee call quality too. But it can do lots of stuff PRI can't.
This is why you never do business with NEC, their willingness to mislead you in the most blatant ways to sell insanely bad products is just crazy.
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@LAH3385 said:
If you get SIP trunks from anyone other than your ISP you give up the ability to hold anyone accountable for call quality. Your ISP will blame the SIP trunk provider. The SIP trunk provider will blame the ISP. If you have a high level of bandwidth it may not be an issue, but no one will guarantee anything. NEC has certified the 9100 to work with several SIP trunk providers. You can get SIP trunks from an uncertified provider but NEC will not guarantee compatibility and troubleshooting won't be covered under warranty.
This is the "SLA Scam" the vendors run. They are playing to your company's politics. He is correct, if your company is all about finger pointing and assigning blame instead of making money then having a lower quality, higher cost ISP delivered service is better. If your goal is call reliability and making money, then this makes no sense.
Notice everything he takes about is blame not quality, reliability or cost. He's been trained in the marketing line to trick you. He knows exactly what to say to make it sound like he is saying something good while not actually saying anything positive at all. He's hoping that you will fill in the blanks and assume the parts that he didn't say.
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@dafyre said:
I was under the impression that if you had a PBX that all of the phones talked to the PBX, and the PBX itself would handle the translation between the phones and the PRI / SIP trunk. The phones themselves would communicate to the PBX via IP or analog phone line or whatever, and the PBX would handle the rest.
Is my thinking wrong on this?
That's correct. What is on one side of the PBX has nothing to do with what is on the other side of the PBX. Just like your router can have Ethernet on one side and a fiber jack on the other or token ring or whatever.
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@johnhooks said:
This is pretty much exactly the same garbage Comcast told us.
They all have the same sales pitch because they all mark up the same thing for the same customers. PRI is where the profit is because they overcharge, deliver almost nothing, lie about it being PRI and lock in customers who buy things that keep them from being able to migrate to another vendor.
This sets them up for all kinds of extortion scams too. I've seen that before. Once people are locked in, the risks of having the phones turned off by a malicious ISP is so high and happens often enough that owners will pay anything to keep from being turned off.
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One thing I never saw in this thread was an estimate of call volume (how many folks are on the phone at the same time) and how many actually phones are tied to your current system?
With 150/150 fiber, you certainly have the bandwidth to support a massive amount of SIP traffic to and from a 3rd party SIP provider at very little impact to your internet bandwidth. We're talking 100 Kb per concurrent inbound / outbound call. Companies like Intelepeer and Nexvortex can give you unlimited concurrent calls without a per-concurrent call fee. They normally apply a set rate to each minute of usage domestic and international calls and charge a small fee per DID you have. Both of these providers (and probably many others) can provide a month-to-month model so you do not have to worry about lengthy contracts. One thing I really like about Intelepeer is the fact that you can call their NOC and talk to a live person within seconds (not always the case with NexVortex).
And it's all correct in that you cannot guarantee the call quality when using a 3rd party SIP provider over your existing internet connection. But with QoS at your gateway, I bet your call quality will be quite good. We've run 3rd party SIP since 2013, and the CEO told me not long ago when we were looking at new SIP providers that he had forgotten we even ran VOIP because it worked so well.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
I was under the impression that if you had a PBX that all of the phones talked to the PBX, and the PBX itself would handle the translation between the phones and the PRI / SIP trunk. The phones themselves would communicate to the PBX via IP or analog phone line or whatever, and the PBX would handle the rest.
Is my thinking wrong on this?
That's correct. What is on one side of the PBX has nothing to do with what is on the other side of the PBX. Just like your router can have Ethernet on one side and a fiber jack on the other or token ring or whatever.
So many individuals think of VOIP systems and believe all components must be VOIP to say you run VOIP. People run VOIP PBXs with POTS lines and a FXO gateway that allows the PBX to make and receive calls with those lines. The same is true for PRI as Scott mentioned (VOIP gateway appliances out there to connect back to a VOIP PBX that runs as VM, etc.). You could even go so far as to continue to use analog or digital desk phones with a new VOIP PBX if you have the right adapters to connect the phones to the PBX (i.e. the Grandstream HT701 to connect analog phones to a VOIP PBX using SIP).
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@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
Yes it will be MUCH MUCH MUCH cheaper. Maybe about half or more than what we are paying right now. Still... Since NEC phone isn't support we will have to provide our own phone system.
- PBX are free. So that should be a none issue.
- Softphones are free. You can always go that route.
- Desk phones start around $80 if you want brand new hardware.
Even building from scratch, the only major cost of a new phone system is often just the optional handset costs.
Time to build it and time to learn to manage it if you are not familiar with the new PBX must be considered. Is this something an admin or team of admins can effectively do to ensure testing and implementation are thorough enough for the project's success? There is a time cost which translates into time not spent on other projects whose completion may have contributed more to increasing company profit.
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I will say if you put the NEC in place in the last couple of years (which I thought I saw that you did), it may be possible to sell it on eBay or to some kind of firm that buys old PBXs to make up a little bit of money toward new handsets / something else. When we got rid of our Avaya IP Office 406 system in 2013 and moved to Elastix, a company bought all the hardware from us for around $1500 - $2000 if memory serves (including about 70 Avaya 5410 desk phones as well).
Compare the cost of the system to the money saved over a period of 2-3 years switching to a SIP provider and using some type of open source PBX. You may make that money up pretty quickly.
