sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Grandstream???

Has anyone had any dealings with a company called Grandstream. I'll be replacing a Grandstream VOIP system Saturday. The unit actually looked decent but the sound quality was the worst I have ever heard. I could install a Merlin 410 and the customer would think I am a hero after using a brand new Grandstream and the thing is brand new and is junk. Is this common or was it the IT guy that installed it thinking phone stuff is easy?

John

"IT Guy" should say it all. :rofl:

-Hal

Unfortunately, I think that there are a lot of companies jumping on the VOIP bandwagon and selling it to unfortunate end-users who buy it because "VOIP is cutting edge". Most of these users would get much better voice quality and better features for less expense from a TDM system.
All too often people are sold on a VOIP system without seeing the huge ammount of money that they are going to have to dump into their network infrastructure to get even passable voice quality.
And yes, all to often these systems are being installed by some IT guy who has no understanding of voice systems.
Just my 2 cents

Paul, I think your 2 cents is worth a full dime. Don't sell yourself short.

I posted this on an Asterisk thread in the VoIP board.

Grandstream is THE cheapest VoIP phone on the market. We had a ten-phone expperimental Asterisk system running with them, and everything except speakerphone worked good enough. Except for two things - their "4 - line" model and the ATA boxes crashed constantly. Kept being told to get the latest firmware... but as far as the phone would tell us it already had it. So like any cheap hardware vendor, tech support was the determining factor....

We're IT people, but call centers are our business. We know that a large-scale VoIP network requires an incredible infrastructure. When our customers want to make that commitment, we'll be ready. Not surprising, that only a few have jumped onto the VoIP bandwagon. One uses a complete Cisco network from the day-to-day data network, to the phones, ALL Cisco. And he's got about a thousand people in the building. Most other customers only use VoIP as a tie-line from their US dialer to a foriegn call center. And a couple are beginning to use VoIP telco service. But these guys are still using analog phones, not IP phones.

Thanks Rob, I went to read the thread in VOIP. What a coincidence I found there. The system I'm replacing is the 4 line version and I'm replacing it with an ESI.

Yeah... while the ESI's got all sorts of various quirks, the phone firmware doesn't crash.

For a call center, where an agent just needs a single-line basic phone, MAYBE the grandstream isn't too bad. But it's definitely not viable as a business PBX phone.