VoIP/Hosted PBX Providors

[cw4u]

Do any of you use VoIP for your church? I'm looking into switching our church over to Nextiva. We currently operate 6 voice, 1 fax, 1 security, and 1 fire line. I was told for insurance reasons to keep fire and security on a dedicated hard line.

Any ideas or tips on transitioning from a POTS system to an IP system? Hosted vs on site PBX...what are your ideas? And, traditional fax vs IP fax? Our Canon C5045 seems to support IP Fax so it might be the way to go.

Thanks!

[adamw]

try packet 8 they have some good plans also alot of cable companies offer digtial voice we switched to it last week and got internet upgrades along with basic cable and are saving 150 dollars a month

[bpalermini]

I used XCast at my last job. They are a hosted VOIP service that worked well for us.

At church they just switched to a hosted VOIP service but I don't know which one. They are happy with it as it offers a lot more features than the old system at a substantial savings.

You need to be sure that you have good internet connectivity. If the VOIP provider partners with a network provider you will want to look into that. If they provide a direct pipe to the VOIP server it will improve the reliability of the service.

We switched to Earthlink data services along with XCast VOIP service where I was working.

We were paying $12.95 per month per extension for 500 minutes national dialing plus a $20 per month IP-PBX fee. They pooled the minutes of our extensions so we never had a problem going over our minutes.

[cw4u]

Do you know if you switched your fire primary/secondary lines or security system lines over to VOIP?

I was told that some companies will up your insurance rates if you do that. I'm looking at a device from Honeywell that is IP/GPRS/SMS capable for fire and probably a cellular transmitter for security if they'll allow it. Both would be cheaper in the long run I would think.

[tedanderson]

The only problem that I see with using a fax machine on a VOIP line is that the voice compression protocols will not transmit "dead air" in order to save bandwidth. Fax machines are dependent on silence breaks during the audible transmission to know the difference between the 1's and 0's. To the average human, the elimination of this silence is transparent but it greatly affects the transmission and reception of fax messages. I think that some VOIP providers have a way of turning this off but because of this technical reason, I use a POTS line for my fax.

I use Teliax in my office which hosts my VOIP PBX. What I like about it is that its scalable so that I only pay for features that I need as I need them in a 30 day billing cycle.

For instance, I pay $45 a month for 2500 minutes usage which includes a virtual interface for 1 device (e.g. a phone or a soft phone) a voice mail box, call waiting, etc. But the beauty of it is that if I want to add an extension, I can do it for another $1.50 a month and the same applies for an additional mailbox.

So if I set up 5 phones today and a few months down the road I realize that I only need 2, I can deactivate them or reactivate them as necessary on a month-to-month basis.

[Morshu]

I'm also considering nextivia. We currently have 3 voice lines and one fax line. 1 main line, one rollover line if line 1 is busy, and one private line. The 4 line plan they have looks promising, which includes a vfax number, which eliminates our needs for a dedicated fax line and machine. They even throw in a toll free number but I'm not sure if that's needed or not. 4 lines and unlimited minutes for less than $100 looks pretty good considering what we pay AT&T now...
The thing I'm concerned about is how all this works. Do you just buy a bunch of IP phones and plug them into your existing network? And what do you do when there's no ethernet where the old phones used to be? Can you convert old phone lines to ethernet lines or do you need a signal amplifier for longer cable runs(~500 feet)? Or could we keep our current analog phone system and operate from VOIP lines? Sorry, I'm kind of new to this.

Let me know if anyone's tried nextivia VOIP services or if they can help at all, thanks.

[bpalermini]

A couple of things to consider.

The VFax line is only good for incoming faxes. You can scan and email things but sometimes you need to send a fax. In my experience we always keep a fax line connected to a analog line. It is also the emergency phone.

You need a data connection everywhere you want a phone unless you go wireless. There are WiFi wireless phones and there are wireless phones with a base that plugs into the data network. I used wireless phones from Snom at my last job. They worked well.

Most VOIP services have a list of phones they support. The phones need to be configured to talk to the VOIP server and the server needs to know the MAC address and the type of phone it is talking to. In my experience the vendor usually configures the phones but you may need to figure it out.

Ethernet is spec'd to a maximum run of 100 meters (328 feet). You can probably go a bit longer but not a lot longer. If you had to you could run 328' then put in a switch then go another 328'.

One other thing you might consider is replacing the switch you use to connect the phones to to a POE (power over ethernet0 switch. This eliminates the need for AC adapters ant the extra cable going to each phone. We used a 8 port TrendNet switch at our smaller locations. It has 4 powered and 4 non-powered ports. It cost around $60.

I'd also recommend not going with the cheapest phones you can find. A larger display and more function buttons make for a much nicer end-user experience.

[Morshu]

Ok, I'll keep those things in mind. The only thing I'm concerned about is somehow integrating the IP phones into the existing wiring, I'm not at all sure if it's possible. Running new ethernet cables would be almost impossible, so if the existing phone line can't be converted then it looks like wireless is the way to go, although it seems less reliable which is what I'm looking for. Thanks for the help.

[bpalermini]

If it's not at least Cat 3 you will need to replace it.

[ChyrillStucker]

You may check with The Real PBX, a VoIP provider. I would suggest you to go for Hosted PBX system because it will cost you less and provide all the latest phone features including what you have mentioned in your requirements. Also it is hassle free, there is no need to install and maintain the system on your site. Everything is taken care of by the service provider. I have been using its services and I am satisfied with them so far.

[EricE]

If you have a handful of phones, hosted VOIP can be appealing - but when I looked if you went over 7 extensions, after a couple of years the costs really started to add up.

We get our phone service through Comcast. While technically VOIP, the deliver analog lines. One goes to our alarms, the rest go to an Allworx VOIP system. The way Comcast delivers the lines, there is no change in service from our alarm company or insurance. Comcast may finally be delivering trunks via SIP - that reminds me, I need to check. It remotes the analog portion and should be a little cheeper per month.

Allworx has a small appliance that is the central controller with voicemail, auto attendant, etc. The phones are Power Over Ethernet (POE) so they power from the wall if you get POE ethernet switches - I highly recommend it. Not only do you not have to have wall warts all over the place, but we have the switches and the Allworx system on a UPS so the phones stay up even when the power goes out.

We ripped out a Nortel Meridian system that had a fractional T1, with fractional T1 internet service and replace it with the base tier Comcast digital voice (5 lines)/Internet. We doubled the number of phone extensions (a little over 40) - finally putting phones in places like the nursery (I can't believe the original design didn't have phones in such critical areas!) and went from less than 1 megabit per second to over 20 for the Internet. We leased the Allworx system for three years - the difference in monthly cost from the fractional T1 by itself (never mind the maintenance or service calls on the Nortel system) vs. the Comcast monthly plus the monthly for the lease halved our monthly telcom costs. Combined with the much better Internet speed, it was a no-brainer, really. Luckily the cable installer that wired the building pulled CAT6 everywhere, even to the phones. They left extra cable in the plenum above the server room when they punched down to the 110 blocks for the original phone system. It was trivial to get a rack mounted CAT6 punch down block for our relay rack, move the cable from the 110 on the wall with the phone system to the relay rack and convert the phone jacks to CAT6 for the VOIP phones. I could have just as easily set up VLANs and plugged computers in to the VOIP phones to reuse the existing runs, but since we had two runs everywhere I figured I might as well leverage them Or you don't even have to set up VLANs but I recommend it to keep the traffic segmented.

This is the final year of the lease and in a few months we will be paying just for Comcast and the savings further multiply. Well go from having spend over $1200 a month to about $350. Over another three years that will represent a significant chunk of change in cost savings!

So, while the allure of hosted services can be strong, you need to do some "what if" calculations for the longer haul - 3 to 5 years - and make sure the value proposition is really there. Now that we are on the back side of our lease - once closed out it's pure savings each month. And it adds up quickly! This affects larger churches way more than smaller churches, obviously - but don't assume just because you are small the long term costs aren't significant.

Also I can't speak highly enough about Allworx. Unlike Shoretell, you can mix and match used and new equipment with no problem (Shoretell might be the only company worse than Cisco on used equipment and getting support/updates). The phones are bullet-proof - the ones we have in public areas have stood up to the typical abuse in high volume commercial spaces great. And the system has really cool features - for example and emergency alert feature. If someone dials 911, all the phones alert - it happened last month. Someone dialed 911 and the phone system alerting got our campus security team involved almost immediately. It also has the typical operator console for monitoring extensions by your receptionist/lead admin assistant if you want it, integration with Outlook for call logging, etc.

Allworx also supports "softphone" and remote extensions - one of the pastors was overseas in Bali and his computer was his "extension" - phone calls would ring right to his laptop. Cool stuff...