sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information which provider will serve me best

I am looking for a phone system for my business. I am having a computer make automated calls for me, and the only equipment I need is the phone jack where I can plug in a standard phone cord. I need about 2-20 calls to be going on at the same time.

I am looking for a system that can...
1) start off small with only 2 lines
2) expand easily to 20 lines should my business grow
3)be as inexpensive per line as possible, but each line much have unlimited local and long distance.
4) have call forwarding so that all incoming calls are shifted away and won't clog up the lines for outgoing calls.

Can someone please tell me what my most inexpensive, reliable options are. Thanks.

USA is a large place. The problem you'll run into is the nature of those 2-20 outgoing automated calls. Some carriers prohibit calls of this nature and you don't really think they'll let you do them for free do you?

Since these lines don't scale (ie price of 2 lines isn't 1/10th of 20) you ought to pick a number, like 8, and make your plan with that number and ask what happens if you increase or decrease from that number.

Start with the local telco and get pricing for call pack plans. Then give your local cable company a call. In our area, we can get 5000 minute trunks for about $40/month, and residential voip trunks for about $30. Problem is that once you start banging on these lines for 480 calls a day, you will soon raise the red flag.

Carl

There's a service I contacted a while back to help me find a T1 provider for our new office.

www.ShopForT1.com

There are T1 providers that have dual-use data/phones, that are scalable. The voice part of the T1 can be broken out to loop start lines with a channel bank.

The plans they have available all had some sort of huge "included" minutes.... But it's not going to be extremely cheap, but better than paying Verizon for each individual POTS line.

As a software developer for an automated/computer dialer company, I can tell you to stay clear of consumer-grade VoIP services like Vonage or Optimum Voice. They have known issues that affect PBX's and dialers, when calls are disconnected.