atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX VoIP & Cloud Phones, Hosted PBX, General IP Phones What's all this VoIP stuff anyway?

Most people are totally ignorant as to what VoIP really is. Because of media hype the only thing they equate it with is lower costs which is not usually true. They will spend twice the cost of a TDM system for a VoIP system thinking that a cost savings will offset the difference and then not see those savings materialize unless they are a large customer with multiple sites.

Blame people like vonage for this one, it makes me laugh when they say cost savings v a normal pots line, for the little old lady if she wanted to switch to vonage, she now has to pay for a broadband service, ontop of the vonage bill, this has effectivly doubled her phone service bill, not to mention when she has a heart attack the E911 implications & risks...........

Ed, I think the fact that most IP guys that came from the computer field is illustrated by the expression "Handset" to describe that 'thingy' on the desk with a curly cord attached to a "Handset". After all, the 'thingy' doesn't do much. It's all in the network. Right? John C.

...Verizon Business perfects sending a sales guy to a typical 30 seat small business that already has a VZ T1 or Fios and then signs them up for 30 Hosted extensions... Verizon ships that office 30 polycom IP phones, the customer plug's them into his cat5 network, the phones come up automatically & if they need help they call an Indian who log's into their network and fault find's for them.

Isn't that kinda the way it used to be pre 1984? After 1984 people got smart and realized that they were shelling out alot of money each month for something that they could own for much less.

Of course that was back in the days of TDM when reliability was a matter of course.

-Hal

Except for very few systems I install, I can remote program them from the office (even swap extensions if need be...)

We just replaced a hosted solution with a TDM system, and the customer loves it...their hosted phones gave them no end of headaches.

Just to clear things up, Im not an IT type, I refer to the Phone as a Handset because I am British, In the world outside the US we refer to the Whole telephone as just the "handset"

Now we have that sorted Govenor...........

That was good. Thank you very much for a bit of humor. It amazes me how much that end-users can completely screw things up with simple "GUI" interfaces. "Hey, I know Windows, I can fix it myself".

"The service provider says that they are receiving excessive blue alarms on one of our PRI circuits. Where do I point and click to fix that?"

"The service provider indicates that there is a tip-to-ground fault on line 3 causing our line noise problem. Where do I point and click to correct this?"

Yeah, OK. We'll have a truck out there tomorrow........

Hell, even Vonage has realized that not everyone is a computer geek and they have started offering installation services. It's not as "GUI" easy for normal people as the CG's think it is.

Hosted IP? Come on. Do we need to bring out our case studies with our own customers who "took a walk on the wild side"? Hosted IP guys need to come to the realization that not everyone walks around with pocket protectors and three pagers.

Well Ed, don't forget that we can swap extensions without a punchdown tool

@ Ed....the truth in advertising should be fully enforced. Peterbu, just because you sell it doesn't make it the best for all customers.

The pocket protector crowd needs more "ED-ucation". Even at your company website, it shows you furnish VoIP boot camps. You should show both sides so the customer can make an informed (not emotional) decision.


:thumb:

I'm not sure that I understand the rocket science behind that supposedly "new technology" statement made by the original poster.

I've had customers doing that on digital (TDM) systems since the late 1980's. Comdial's Digitech (long-since discontinued) offered that with no customer intervention whatsoever. Simply pick up the phone and move it to another live jack and retain that phone extension's attributes. Vodavi's systems have also offered similar flexibility for nearly two decades as well. I can even do that on my dinky Panasonic system at my home, circa 1992.

Am I missing something here or does VoIP make this same thing happen even better? :rolleyes:

Ed, I was just kidding. The Inter-Tel Axxess has had this feature for several years also through database programming.