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Hosted Voip is basically no more than a "High school science experiment"
Most hosted setup's I have seen are a total disarster........No quality of service, they just ship the phones to the customer to plug in themselfs....and hope for the best.......
to Do voip well, you need minimum T1 service, & new switches & routers @ the customer that have been configured for voice traffic.
Avalon Services New Jersey Voip Telephone systems voice & Data Cabling www.avalonphones.com
It depends on the provider and the features you are looking for. If you have a P2P T1 or better back to the providers switch and they have implement QOS it should run pretty well.
Now, there's the feature issue. Most hosted VOIP systems act more Centrex like rather than a key system. Line appearance may or may not work, overhead paging can be interested etc. Really it all depends on the provider. A large number of hosted VOIP providers are strictly "Computer Geeks" and will have no idea how to implement many features that worked with your old XYZ system.
In my opinion VOIP is not bad, however your provider better know what they are doing.
Personally I enjoyed high-school. Got some of my best sleep there.
But as Aircom said, VoIP (much like TDM) requires someone who knows what they are doing.
As far as advantages or disadvantages of VoIP vs TDM you can search this board to your hearts content to find that info out.
What you probably wont find much on is hosted VoIP. So I'll list what I can think of for it's advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages: - Better Infrastructure (sitting in colo usually) - Cheaper access to bulk lines (50+ phone lines) - Should have better SLA (Colo can have redundant power grids, large-scale battery back-up with genpower, multiple Tier-1/Tier-2 bandwidth mix, etc) - Should be able to handle larger number of distributed users with less issues - Usually less vulnerable to storms and other things related to acts of god - Usually maintained with back-up's and can quickly recover (should be within hours) from hardware failures - Usually can offer interesting phone routing options in case of last-mile failure or what-not - Hopefully cheaper long distance thanks to bulk-rate/carrier pricing
Disadvantages: - High-Quality internet required for any sort of office locations (SDSL, T1, MPLS, etc) with multiple phones; Single-phones should be OK but your mileage may vary - Cost more for brick-and-mortar offices (non-distributed phones) - Not cost effective for smaller set-up's (sub 50-trunks I guess) - It's a service; If the company you are with goes belly up or decides they no longer want your business you have to start over from scratch.
That's kind of what I can think of that relates specifically to Hosted VoIP vs In-House VoIP or TDM.
For a lot of lengthy (sometimes heated) discussions of VoIP vs TDM in general feel free to use the search function of this board. There was also a nice write-up by Ed that is stickied at the top of this forum as well.
The number could be ported back just like if the provider was still in business. The FCC clarified the rules on ports where there is another layer of 'customer' (CLEC->VoIP Provider->Real Customer) so the real customer can port away their numbers. If they are no longer in business it makes the port a bit trickier but LNP can still be done even if the losing company doesn't concur with the port.
Makes sense, a lot of hosted providers I have seen are basically just reselling their voip trunks thru a large national backbone like L3. Technically L3 owns the end users numbers not the hosted company "providing" the service.
Avalon Services New Jersey Voip Telephone systems voice & Data Cabling www.avalonphones.com
