We just started playing around with VOIP a couple of weeks ago. A couple of things have come to mind.

Who decided line appearances aren't important?
Who decided voice mail shouldn't call your cell phone when you get messages?
Who decided that nobody transfers messages internal to the voice mail system or will do broadcast messages?
Who decided that a huge stack of basic phone features like directed call picked, group call pickup, call cover ring, etc. wasn't important?
Who decided that the ability of installing a phone a couple of thousand feet away from control on 2 wires is a worse setup then a few hundred feet on 8 wires?
Who decided MOH and page ports aren't important?
Who decided just a few programmable buttons are satisfactory?

Not only that, in the last month of learning this stuff I've talked to 4 manufacturers. In all cases I've had calls talking to them that break up, have delays or some other problem. It would seem to me if the manufacturers of the equipment are having voice issues, and they are the guys that should have absolutely the best tech guys, then what real chance do we have of doing an installation that works flawlessly?

I see a few advantages to VOIP but it seems to me they are drastically overshadowed by a massive number of faults, at least for many small business customers.

Somebody tell me I'm wrong here.

--Bill.

In Many cases it's like using the Space Shuttle to go to 7/11 for for a Slurpee.

Bill the answer to many of your questions is because it has been designed by computer people,

These computer people do not have a background in SMB pbx/key systems.

The guy who couldn't figure out how to make his VOIP system do all that stuff because of "cryptic configuration files" and "command lines"?

Or maybe there was no option for that in the web interface, so, therefore, it cannot be done.

Everything you listed can be done with VOIP with a bit of know-how (and the right equipment).

Tell me what modern phone system DOES NOT have a computer running it?

What systems were you looking at? We have none of these problems.

My Shoretel system does pretty much all of this. I was even able to connect a small office to our system by connecting a few IP phones with power bricks to their network. The phones even look pretty nice, though I have a couple of users who have moved the phones in out-of-the-way spots as they simply use the Call Manager software and a headset to make/receive calls.

As with anything, it really depends on your needs and the skill of the installer.

We haven't had too many issue with call quality. Prior to installing, I had some reservations about that since I'm using share voice/data circuits from the CLEC.

AVAYA IP Office does those things. Others do also.
Alot depends on QOS testing before the install, & the installing company.

Really? I'd like to see you plug an IP phone in a 1500' cable and make it work. We just got through contracting a VOIP cable job in a huge warehouse and were amazed at the number of hubs and fiber required to build the backbone.

The good old Vodavi XTS would have just required a simple cable plant without thousands of dollars invested in fiber runs and switches all over the place. You tell me why in the world a warehouse dock phone needs to be IP? I think this customer spent as much on the cable plant and switches as a complete digital phone system would have cost.

I'm sorry but something's wildly out of whack on some of these installs. I understand a few customers can really utilize VOIP but spending a small fortune on this stuff for warehouse phones???

I believe a lot of customers are buying this because of buzzwords, not merits. In all honesty the vast majority of customers I see after 6 months can make and receive calls, most of them still know how to page, a few can do station to station intercom and none of them can speed dial. These same customers need VOIP? Generally we try to sell 30 button phones and put everything on a button. We tell the customer to just push the button versus them having to remember codes. Works well for the small guys.

As far as call quality maybe you have no problems but 4 different manufacturers of equipment had issues on call quality when I talked to them. Maybe your definition of good call quality differs from mine. I consider breaking up, echos, stuttering, etc. to be poor quality. If this is the new standard of acceptability then I definitely need to get out of this business.

We're looking at an IP system and the company has been very good to deal with so far. We'll see how it goes but the more we look into VOIP systems the less I see any reason for them for the vast majority of small businesses. We're getting a number of call from people with say three lines and five phones wanting a VOIP system. You tell me why a transmission shop needs a VOIP system?

PS: I have (had) a pile of 3Com, Cisco, Allworx and some home brew IP systems we've pulled out in our warehouse. The customer's complaints were always exactly the same, too difficult to use and poor call quality. I'm finding few takers from the refurb houses or Ebay to dump this stuff. By the way, not a single box had a page port or MOH port on it, basic phone system interfaces.

You know you won't get an argument from me.

You tell me why a transmission shop needs a VOIP system?

Because they have been brainwashed. I've yet to sell an IP system and I doubt I ever will. Read some of the posts here. Just the BS involved with making a system work is enough for me.

So you guys who are selling it, good for you. I won't be a part of it because my customers don't need it. If I can't make them can't understand that they can find somebody else.

-Hal

I have seen VOIP deployed in a junk yard with 4 lines and 6 phones. They spent a small fortune for something that could have been picked up a key system off the shelf. No line appearances...I mean WTH with 4 lines? DHCP server keep going down from the computers locking up because of the heat and DIRT causing the system to lock up.

Shoretel phones? :rofl: Sorry, every time I see them I am like what was that person smoking designing those.

I know how to make IP work over 1500' of cable.

So do I now. It just isn't as easy as punching the cable down on one end and putting a jack at the other. :rolleyes:

brian703, when you complete your profile with a real address, not "USA", maybe your opinions will be taken with some validity.

Most individuals who fill out profiles in this manner are usually CGs. 'Nuff said?

:read:

Just a few other observations:

It seems the VOIP purveyors are going to the Microsoft model instead of the client server (Unix) model that our phone systems operate on. To wit, the phone sets themselves are a very integral part of the systems operation versus our model of dumb terminals hooked up to a server (KSU) that stores everything.

Just looking at this; https://wiki.snom.com/Snom320/Firmware leads me to believe that real issues are going to show up servicing VOIP. What version Asterisk or whatever do you have? What version phones do you have? What version phones will work with what other version phones? What version phones work with what version of VOIP box? If you update a phone will it quit working with whatever version VOIP box you're running? Since lots of information is stored in the set itself what happens when you replace a phone, will the VOIP server back up the phones data?

If what I believe is true then the long term service consequences will do nothing but complicate maintenance and cause the customer to incur quite a bit of additional costs. Of course from a revenue standpoint this would be a good thing for us. From the customer's satisfaction viewpoint it may well not be a good thing.

Ponder this, I have a Vodavi Triad III with 220 phones on it with dual 8 port voice mail systems that was installed years ago. It's a medical billing service that makes thousands of calls a day. I have never replaced a single card in the system and the average phone death has been running at less than 5 phones a year. No program changes and as far as I can tell it has never had even the most minor software fault or error processing calls. To top things off half the phones are 15+ years old from the prior 96EX system they had.

Is it even conceivable that any iteration of a VOIP system would even approach this kind of reliability? This customer is soon going to find out because some slick talking salesman has convinced them that they'll save a fortune and greatly enhance their business with a hosted VOIP solution. This will be interesting, especially the saving money part. The customer averages about $100 a month in service costs and has two PRI circuits at $299 each. They have no branch offices nor any home employees. They also told the customer that they would not need to change their switches since the Grandstream phones they are proposing work flawlessly on any data network. I've seen the traffic on their network, it's continuously bottlenecked from the extreme amount of data input.

Once again, am I wrong in my observations?

You are comparing an almost 40 year-old technology that has seen billions of investments in research and implementation with a technology that in real terms is barely 10 years old.
Also, there are several systems from Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Siemens etc that can do most of the stuff you describe, and many others that circuit-swithed systems can't. And that is the ONLY REAL difference between VOIP and the rest:

VOIP switches packets.
Traditional telephony switches circuits.

Other than that they are both "digital", microprocessor-based systems. Also, it is not true that all traditional pbx/ksu systems are client-server. KSU-less systems are peer-to-peer. Some of the older pbxs were following the mainframe-dumb terminal model. Btw UNIX or Windows has nothing to do with client-server, it is just a model they may or may not use. They both use peer-to-peer, client-server, or mainframe-dumb terminal when it suits them.

Other than that, you make very valid points. The thing is that most companies already have infrastructure in lan cabling, lan switching etc. So often a new IP extension can be as simple as plugging in a phone to a lan jack.

All i can say is that it must be nice to have that kind of customer. I mean, they pay for the installation of one system, decide its not working for them, then pay YOU to rip it out and install something else. In times like these those customers are hard to find. Good Job.

Try posting the pile of surplus in the "Buy/Sell" forum, im sure you'll get a few offers.

Let me add that the vast majority of CGs that I've known are at a loss when it comes to VOIP. I They know how to plug it in, but making it work is a different story. Telecom was the unwanted orphan of IT - not glamorous enough, and quite arcane, talking about data telecom now. Voip requires a whole other skill set. I think CGs and telephone people are positioned an equal distance away from that skill set.
Seems like a lot of people here want to let CGs get there first.

I'm not here to have my opinions taken with validity. If you like them, that's fine. If not, move on.

However, what I stated about VOIP is a FACT.

It's reminiscent of what happened when cars lost the points and condenser, the carburetor, and suddenly "you can't work on them anymore".

Well, maybe YOU can't. Someone who took the time to learn the new technology instead of griping about it can.

You could leave it at that and be accurate. Most of them..if they can't fix it with a couple clicks of the mouse, it won't be fixed.

There's no web interface for the equipment you need to make it work either.

You can set the phone to retrieve it's configuration from the server. Then you configure the phone settings on the server, which gives them to the phone when it boots up.

You could also configure the settings directly on the phone, but you will probably find this unmanageable for more than a few phones, and there will be no backup of the configuration settings.

Man, I've been here for over 3 years now and I've finally managed to ruffle enough feathers to get a 1-star rating from 2 people?

I'll summarize the problem with VOIP, and whether you like this or not, it's the truth:

The problem is not the technology, it is the implementation, and part of the implementation depends on the skills of the installer.

One poor implementation of VOIP I've seen has an expensive Cisco IP phone mounted on a wall, configured as a ringdown to the security office.

There should be an analog phone connected to an ATA there. Not a phone which is #1, expensive to replace and #2, subject to abuse.

web page

VoIP Phone Systems - When done wrong, hurts.
Christopher Reagoso, April 15, 2008 * DRAFT * Revisions to follow, stay tuned!

By revealing the dirty little secret of VoIP phone systems to you, a dirty little secret equipment vendors don't like to talk much about, I seriously risk being excluded from every good party thrown by my computer tech friends in Philadelphia, especially since many of them are trying to "get into the phone business" by selling VoIP systems to Small and Medium Business (SMB) customers with the promise of lower phone bills and a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). To make matters worse, some of my tech friends enjoy confusing matters using abbreviations and acronyms in conversation like SMB, TCO, as well as SIP, QoS, MOS, TDM, as if use of those terms establishes some kind of an authority...

Even though I risk being shunned by my tech pals, I suspect I'll also make a lot of new SMB friends, be kept in better company with them, and be satisfied in knowing that I saved my new SMB friends from the hassle of poorly implemented VoIP systems by writing this article...

It sure is nice when you pick up the phone, and it just works. There's a dial tone, and you push buttons, and your call goes through.

That is changing with the introduction of cheap VoIP phone systems and VoIP phone service.

There's nothing wrong with VoIP itself - the problem is that vendors are trying to sell VoIP technology to consumers that will not benefit from it on promises of saving some money on long distance calls or adding some extra lines (SIP trunks) to phone systems for almost no money.

Adding to the problem, phone vendors love selling VoIP systems since they make more money when they sell VoIP systems, and some vendors will do anything to close the deal. It's easy to make more money selling VoIP phone systems to small businesses. In the mind of the small business owner, the hardware expense competes with the monthly recurring expense of the phone bill. If there's a way to get the monthly cost of the phone bill down, maybe they can afford the new phone system.

The small business owner sees the promise of a cheaper monthly phone bill and decides that they can afford the VoIP phone system. Even though a traditional phone system actually costs a little less than the VoIP system, the monthly bills for traditional phone service will cost a little more, so the traditional phone system is ruled out.

Hardware vendors selling VoIP systems make more because they use the phenomena of the smaller phone bill as a way to justify the expense of the system, so the vendor will sell a few extra phone systems that month.

When the small business owner connects their new phone system to their internet, they are suprised to discover that the VoIP calls are poorer in quality (fuzzy, sometimes voice cuts out, sometimes calls drop). This is because the VoIP traffic competes with all of the office's other internet traffic. The VoIP hardware vendor is quick and correct in pointing out that it's not a problem with the equipment they sold to the client, but it is a problem with the customer's local area network, internet connection, or VoIP telephone service provider.

Many disappointed small business owners now face the fact "when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is." When they try to leave their VoIP provider they find they have to pay fees to terminate and sometimes lose their phone numbers.

To resolve the problem, the business owner must switch to ordinary telephone lines, or add an additional internet connection to their office dedicated to their telephone system. While the extra internet connection may help, it cannot permanently resolve the problem.

The problem with VoIP isn't actually a VoIP problem at all - it's a hype problem - a problem with peoples' expectations of what VoIP can deliver versus what it was designed to deliver, and by new vendors and inexperienced users misapplying the technology to try to save two cents a minute on phone calls.

VoIP frequently doesn't work well on the internet - and it's not a problem with the speed of the internet, or the speed of your connection to the internet - it's a problem with the "Quality of Service" or QoS on the internet.

QoS is a feature that lets you (or more specifically, trusted network operators) control the priority of data traffic on a network.

On the open internet, it's like the wild west - this is by design and will never change. Nobody's network traffic has priority over anyone else's. On a good day, everything flows fine - probably even most of your VoIP traffic. On an average day there's regional outages, routine maintenance, and other problems that cause a delay of network traffic. The internet even has a few "rush-hours," usually when the kids get home and before everyone goes to work. These delays may last only a half-a-second, maybe a little more, and YouTube'ers, and music downloaders don't mind. If your email is delayed a few seconds, you probably don't mind that either. You probably also wouldn't notice, or wouldn't even care, if you were downloading web pages and there was a one or two second delay.

VoIP packets are the some of the most sensitive of all network traffic. Any disturbance, any delay, or even if too many of them arrive in the wrong order an your phone call goes fuzzy or drops.

Equipment vendors selling VoIP hardware will frequently dismiss the QoS issue and tell you that you only need to use a router with QoS on it. What they don't tell you is that the router can only control outbound network traffic, and it cannot control inbound traffic - or what "the internet is throwing at you."

Putting a QoS router on your internet connection is a band-aid - it does not permanently fix the the problem. If someone on your network is on YouTube, the internet is throwing video at you. If someone on your network is listening to streaming audio or internet radio, the internet is already throwing audio at you. Add that to inbound email, web sessions, virtual private network (VPN) traffic, intensive remote desktop sessions and other forms of remote office access, and your VoIP service gets very unreliable. You can't fix the problem by throwing more bandwidth (more speed) at it either. You have to control QoS to fix the problem, and you cannot control QoS on the internet.

Since you cannot control the inbound data QoS (what traffic the internet is "throwing at you"), you will experience fuzzy and dropped calls if you are using VoIP for your telephone service. Make sure you have some traditional phone lines to fall back on. Then again, this is not the kind of experience you want your customers to have when they're talking to you in the first place.

Big companies love VoIP technology. They can afford to deploy it properly. They can afford the dedicated network connections between their large offices that are required to deliver reliable, "fuzz free" calls. These dedicated connections save a lot of expense for inter-office calling versus having all of the inter-office calls go through the phone company (or Public Switched Telephone Network - PSTN).

If you are using VoIP for interoffice calls (e.g., you have more than one office location and are trying to save some money by linking phone systems with VoIP), you must have a "managed network connection" between your sites. When you have a managed network, you can control the priority of network traffic ensuring the voice packets get the highest priority from end-to-end. Generally, a managed network between offices means a dedicated data connection between offices. VoIP networked PBX'es are great for offices with a hundred employees at each site, and will save them some money. It doesn't make sense for the small business, though.

Simply put, unless you can afford a dedicated data circuits between your office sites, you will experience dropped calls, fuzzy calls, and have other problems.

Buying VoIP? Buy Local! If you are considering a VoIP phone system, you are always better choosing a local vendor. Do not choose an internet reseller. Your local vendor will know who all of the good local internet and SIP providers are - most importantly, they're "within reach" if your new phone system doesn't work as advertised. Most importantly - use an experienced local vendor and always, always check references first!

Do you need a phone system with 50 or fewer telephones? More than likely you'll benefit from a lower total cost of ownership, and greater reliability provided by a traditional telephone system. If you have a few remote workers - or even a dozen - a traditional phone system is likely still a better choice. The phone company solved this problem long ago with call forwarding, Centrex, and other services you can add to your account. Even when you add a few monthly services to your phone bill, a traditional phone system usually costs less in the long run than a VoIP phone system for small business.

Best of all - with a traditional phone system, when you pick up the phone, there's a dial tone. When you press buttons, the call goes through. Once your call is in progress it will stay on and give you no problems, unless of course the other guy has VoIP service or is on a cell phone.

Sorting through the hype, options, and service providers, and hardware vendors - and deciding how and when to go VoIP - is a minefield for any business (Forbes, 8/07).

The truth about internet phone system sales: As dealers, we all earn rebates or get lower pricing when we sell a lot online. The more we sell, the less we pay. Resellers that sell VoIP hardware online make more when they sell VoIP hardware than when they sell traditional hardware. VoIP phone systems are great for equipment resellers dumping equipment on internet consumers. Telephone system vendors make more money when you buy a VoIP phone system.

If you decide to purchase a VoIP phone system from an internet vendor, get a guarantee it will work so you can return it, or be prepared for a fight if it doesn't.

Another reason internet VoIP hardware vendors love selling VoIP hardware - it is easy to blame someone else (even you) when it doesn't work. Let's say your calls are dropping, or fuzz-out, or you're not even getting calls. Your vendor can blame it on your local area network, your internet connection (the "last mile" - your DSL, cable, or fiber connection), or the internet upstream (the internet beyond your walls - the internet you have no control of - the internet that connects the big providers to each other), or your dial tone provider (sometimes called SIP trunk provider).

If you have a traditional phone system, your hardware reseller cannot pass the buck as easily - you simply disconnect your phone system from the phone company's telephone line, and attach an ordinary telephone (or test set), and if you have dial tone, you know the problem is in the phone system. There's no guessing. It's just more reliable.

We sell traditional phone systems to do-it-yourselfers and other professionals through our web store. We do not sell VoIP phone systems over the internet. This was a decision we made since the small VoIP systems and service providers can be quite unreliable. When our customers have problems with their equipment, we do not send them off to the manufacturer for support, we work with our customers every inch of the way. Since VoIP systems tend to be a lot more trouble if not properly installed, we choose not to sell them over the internet.

As soon as we feel VoIP has matured, and QoS issues have been solved, we will carry it in our web store. Right now we agree with Forbes Magazine and feel that it is more hype than value.
Food for thought...


Someone commented to me after reading the draft that I sure included a lot of links about the problems with VoIP in small business. To be even handed, I tried googling things like "phone system problems" and "phone system drawbacks" and "traditional phone system problems" and nearly every article that returned was about problems with VoIP phone systems. Don't believe me, for a laugh, just try it yourself.


Reference Library

Video: Vonage Voice Over IP Review
Are VoIP carriers unreliable?
Fee to cancel unreliable VoIP service is unfair
Video: Number portability problem
VoIP Security Challenges
Is VoIP Reliable?
Hacking VoIP
VoIP Problems
IP Telephony Problems and Challenges
VoIP Cons, Problems and Pitfalls
VoIP System Security: Time to Worry, or Maybe Not
The Top 5 VoIP Security Threats of 2008
Brace Yourself: VoIP Spam Is Coming
Wireless Broadband + VoIP = Problems
Why there's no Internet QoS and likely never will be
QoS Fact or Fiction
Why QOS is Important and QOS Action List
Twitter Updates

* Did you know the makers of the Vertical SBX are closing their warehouse for an Entire Week? Reminder: Reliability is AVAILABILITY. 24 days ago
* Microsoft pulls the plug on Response Point. Expect a lot of new and no-name VoIP companies to fail as well. https://blogs.technet.com/rp/ 45 days ago
* Want new features for free? Upgrade your firmware. https://bit.ly/i2K3Y 91 days ago
* Are you using Direct Inward Dial, or are you forcing customers to dial extensions? Get out of the dark ages. https://tinyurl.com/nec-dsx-did 98 days ago
* VoIP for the NEC DSX is almost upon us! https://tinyurl.com/necdsxvoip 100 days ago

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To summarize that: Don't use VOIP because if you use SIP trunks, internet congestion may cause them to not work well.

On that note, was my KXT-308 VOIP enabled when I had one of the trunk ports connected to an ATA?

Brianl703 This is absolutely true - you will find many people on this board that only believe in TIP and RING and would rather bash VoIP than admit the technology will run them over in the near future when there will be no TDM systems to sell as new implementations.

Sure maybe for the office with 2 or 5 people but you sure cant make any money on that sale and I am pretty sure 1/2 of those sales will then be carrier based SIP offerings.

Some of them bash VoIP because they are afraid to learn VoIP or don't have the skills to learn, some say its crap and not worth their time to learn and some just bash it in hopes it will never run them over.

The come back for the basher is TDM will be here for ever - sure as it will as grey market used stuff.

The question is can your business survive if you dont adopt new technologies - I believe that answer is NO!

We adopted it a few years back and have been very happy with the systems we sell and the revenue it generates.

Our IP system sales are at least twice to three times that of any hybrid sales and I am thinking with 2 years we will not be selling a hybrid system at all.

Yes we invested the time and money it takes to be successful and it has paid off big time.

I think TIP and RING still has it's place.

Because of that...

I like using the PAP2 ATA to marry TIP and RING with VOIP. The support the PAP2 has for analog telephones far exceeds that of most of the TDM stuff I've seen.

FSK message waiting? The PAP2 does that.
Caller-ID? The PAP2 does that.
CPC that works right? The PAP2 does that.
48V talk battery? The PAP2 does that.
Call-waiting Caller-ID? The PAP2 does that.

(These all tend to be "problem areas" for TDM systems, don't they?)

You can even use a PAP2 to add MOH input or paging outputs to a VOIP system.

All I want to do is hang a KSU on the wall, connect the POTS CO Lines and run one or two pairs to each phone. I want to be able to simply program from a predefined feature set using a phone or a GUI interface. That's all the majority of customers need to keep them happy.

I DON'T want to become a software programmer.
I DON'T want to contend with software licenses and upgrades.
I DON'T want to become a network administrator.
I DON'T want to become a computer jockey.
I DON'T want to contend with SIP or any of that BS.

NONE OF THIS CRAP IS NEEDED!! What the hell is so hard for you VoIP guys to understand?? This is all designed by the manufacturers to put more money into their shareholder's pockets by modeling the telecom business after the IT business. TDM systems lasted forever with little maintenance, THAT HAD TO BE CORRECTED with something that generated a constant revenue stream.

And the suckers are falling for it.

-Hal

Well, not exactly. These are basic standards as specified by the FCC and Telecordia (formerly Bellcore) for all telephone systems and hardware in the United States. The fact that local service providers are constantly trying to reinvent the wheel with gadgets to squeeze more life out of their cable plant is the problem. They install these contraptions, but don't know how to configure them.

IP, TDM or even Close-N-Play systems is irrelevant: All phone lines are supposed to be delivered to the customer premises within the limits of these standards. An improperly-configured Cisco IAD that is only putting out 34 VDC for dial tone or 50 VAC ringing voltage isn't going to work for many, if not most systems.

Oh and yes: Many of these contraptions are often made by manufacturers that are not experienced in the real ins and outs of these standards.

Point is, the properly configured PAP2 will meet the standards.


It even has enough ring power to ring the bell on a 2500 set. 3 of 'em, in fact. (I didn't try 5 to see if it delivers a full 5 REN but I expect it does).


As far as TDM systems lasting forever, they do. It's just that technology marches on and something as trivial as caller-ID is "sorry, can't do that. Not with out a special board that's as rare as rocking horse turds and has a price tag to match".

something as trivial as caller-ID is "sorry, can't do that.

What are you talking about? True, a 20 year old system may not support CID but newer ones certainly do and can have every feature you can ask for. That's because they are a REAL telephone system, not a computer simulation of one. Upgrade to a new TDM system if you need something and be happy, don't create headaches with IP.

-Hal

So TDM systems last forever, but you must upgrade to a new one every now and then if you want a new feature (or if the manufacturer discontinues support for it and something breaks). Which generates a constant revenue stream, too.

Hal, I believe you need to rethink a little of this. VOIP definitely has it's place. What bothers me is the purveyors of this equipment are targeting customers that have no use for it and doing them a real disservice in the process.

We are going to have to learn these systems to stay competitive. Eventually real phone guys versus CGs will become more heavily involved in the design and development mitigating some of the complexity and lack of some basic functions.

I don't believe TDM will completely die. The inherent reliability and low cost alone will keep them around for a long time, especially for small companies or installations in adverse environments.

Somebody is also going to have to come up with an alternate option to interface VOIP phones than using POE switches and 4 pair cable. Cost and length limitations alone hurt large installations. Using a single pair for data and power has served the industry well. There should be an option for this.

So TDM systems last forever, but you must upgrade to a new one every now and then if you want a new feature (or if the manufacturer discontinues support for it and something breaks). Which generates a constant revenue stream, too.

But that doesn't happen nearly as much as with something that is designed to generate a constant revenue stream. IP is modeled after something where it is accepted practice to pay ongoing for licenses, upgrades and for general operation. So as long as it's presented as IT equipment to IT people, the constant costs are something they are used to.

Try that with a customer who has had a TDM system for 20 years and maybe had to buy a couple of phones for it at most.

-Hal

Its been done already.

Cisco will release a full size desk phone by years end. I have seen it at a local Cisco office and it is cool. Price is extremly competative.

How about this -

Programming a Cisco UC system - they are GUI interfaces so you can just plug in the system, connect your choice of CO lines, install an AP for the wireless desk phones(very soon)or connect them to the cabled network, use your predefined feature set and your done.

No blocks, brackets, cross wires, labeling of blocks, no Desi labels.

Quicker than a typical TDM install.

Don't knock it until you try it. It really is not that hard.

Brian- You are correct. There are upgrades to TDM systems.

#1- The TDM upgrades are few a far between compared to constant updates, software patches, switch upgrades, and cabling upgrade requirements that accompany almost every VOIP install. The VOIP ROI is a scam. You get an ROI on TDM too. The big difference is with TDM you invest less, and get the ROI on the equipment faster. We all understand that times are hard and we need to find ways to cut back. But if your business relies on your telephone system working, and that don't mean working SOME of the time, you shouldn't go with a full VOIP solution.

#2- If you are honest with your clients you will tell them that they can have VOIP if they want it. You at least have to offer it to them. After all, they probably approached you about it in the first place. But, if you are telling your client that VOIP is just as good, or as reliable as a TDM system, YOU ARE LYING. The two platforms are totally different. One is extremely reliable. One is not very reliable at all. 99.999 up time is a hard number to beat. Show me one VOIP manufacturer that can come close.

That's my opinion on the subject, and we all know what they say about opinions.

not happening with the uc500 ... we are a cisco "partner" and have been working with the uc since it came out,
We have been nothing but dissapointed with the uc GUI's lack of ability to do any real world phone system programming, any time you need to do something just slightly cutom you have to go to the command line. and here is where it realy gets good - now that you have done some programming in the command line the gui constantly locks up and gives you errors.
I have spent endless hours on the phone with their tac support on issues that would be fixed in minutes with our other manufactures...

Brian703, thanks for the profile update.....continue on.......................

www.telcom1.net
I am surprised to hear that. We have never had those issues with the 500 or 520.

Evidently I'm not the only one to find issues with the UC500. UC500 support issues

It's kind of disturbing when you don't even understand what the problem is, much less how to fix it.

Or how about this jewel:
Note the comment at the bottom.

Somehow I suspect a lot of CGs don't know what that means, much less telephone techs.

Is this the new world of telecom we're heading to? I don't think the transmission shop customer is going to care for paying for the all day service call because something like the above happened out of warranty and his desk phone quit.

I'm hoping the vendor we are looking at has a good handle on these type of things.

You can run VOIP on cat3. No problem.

Kinda defeats the purpose of "running on a network" huh!

Scott

Also, I saw earlier where TDM must be replaced every so often?? What about the fact that Cisco ( Can I Still Call Out), requires network hardware to be relaced every 3 years?

Just my .02


Scott

Cisco does not require network hardware to be replaced every 3 years, and in fact they continue to offer IOS downloads and documentation for equipment they haven't manufactured in over 10 years.

Yes, they offer documentation for equipment they don't even make anymore, to anyone who cares to look at it. That's why there are no "Cisco manuals" websites.

The best VOIP design separates the voice and data networks. That does not, however, mean that they cannot be connected together. This gets into more advanced network design, though.

My point was that cat3 is NOT a supported network cable these days is it?

Do TDM switches require you to license users yearly, like Cisco?

Isn't this horse dead yet?

From what little I know VoIP (in-office VoIP as well as trunks) is best suited for the medium business crowd and bigger.

So, if you have less then 100 employees, in my opinion, you are better served by Digital/TDM systems in most cases.

That being said, I do like VoIP over TDM. But I will also qualify that statement by saying I am obviously biased. If you had the knowledge and skill to bend things to your will you would like it too.

This Horse will never die.

It will continue to be debated here and other forums for a long time and the dividing line betweem VoIP&TDM supporters, VoIP only supporters and TDM only supporters will probably continue forever as well.

The only change is the dividng line size will change as VoIP replaces TDM.

At the end of the day its what the manufacturers continue to develop and support that will determine what you sell or if you need find something else to do.

This is just natural progression and some of you have already done this transition from 1A2 to Analog TDM (talk about a huge change) and most from Analog TDM to Digital TDM and now to Hybrids with whatever manufacturers you have been representing except now you will have to move from TDM/Digital/Hybrids to VoIP.

So until whatever replaces VoIP comes along it will be system of choice like it or not - so why not adopt it, learn and move your business forward?

As far as the support issues with Cisco they are no diferent than any other large manufacturer and quite honestly we have not had many becuse we took the time and spent the money to gain the competance on the product and the confidence of the clients.

Believe me my team and I have worked on and continue to work on most large PBX's - Siemens, Ericsson, Avaya, Nortel and Alacatel. I think most of the support issues are caused by the manufacturers causing there own problems by rushing everything to market before having full confidence in the SW/HW.

Small key system manufacturers are guilty of this as well but it becomes more pronounced when it is a larger more complex system than a litle 4 x 8 box.

Whether it is 1A2, TDM or IP/VoIP if you are not properly educated in the particular discipline and trained on the product - how can you support it and have competance on the product or even confidence in your self to install and maintain it?

At the end of the day if it weren't for all the people that did not understand simple TDM telephony, forums like Sundance, Cisco Support, PBX-Info, Tek-Tips and others would not be really needed to answer questions and address system faults and complain between each other about manufacturers etc.

All of these forums have great value for the day to day simple questions or brain farts - it happens to all of us.

As far as system competance goes this is where almost everyone gets into trouble thinking because they have past experience on System A they can now support System B - just doesn't work that way very well and if you are crossing disciplines it will never work.

Ride on Dead Horse!

You know ofcourse that comparing VOIP and TDM is wrong.
VOIP is a transport mechanism.
TDM is a modulation scheme.

Just being anal. :p

Amen to that.

At the end of the day its what the manufacturers continue to develop and support that will determine what you sell or if you need find something else to do.

Well, not exactly. It's the marketplace that determines what the manufacturers sell and if there is a demand for TDM they will manufacture it.

The dealers who believe in VoIP are in it for the money or also because they are ignorant of other alternatives (CGs). The die hard TDM believers are just being honest and looking out for their customer's best interests.

When you talk about the changes throughout the years from 1A to 1A2 to the current TDM offerings, there weren't too many people who objected because the changes were for the better. They made installation magnitudes easier as well moves and changes, and provided features that older legacy systems couldn't.

Compare that to the absolute crap that represents the current crop of VoIP systems that are a giant step BACKWARDS in ease of use, maintenance and ROI. This isn't progress, it's a lateral move by the industry to generate more money and that isn't at all surprising given the greed and bankrupt morals that permeates corporate America.

So, if it's the manufacturers that are going to determine what I sell as you say, then sure as hell I am going to find something else to do. I won't be a part of something that I feel is being dishonest to my customers.

My feeling also is this industry as we know it has it's days numbered anyway. If you think you have a future selling VoIP think again because that's not what the manufacturers are thinking. Their success relies on IT implementation companies who already have a large presence in most corporations and businesses. They want to rely on college educated and certified IT "professionals" who already have a working relationship with the customers they want to market to.

So you can push VoIP all you want, the day is going to come when the competition from the IT industry is going to put us guys with jeans and white trucks out to pasture.

-Hal

Some good points so far, the only thing i would say is be very wary of "New" voip manufactures signing you up to sell their new system that in their words "is vastly superior to anything else on the market"

Be carefull the same snake & oil salesman from this "new voip manufacturer" will be nowhere to be seen after the install when YOUR customer is not happy as they cant make quality calls at certain times of the day.

Expect the "new Voip Manufacturer" to Throw YOU the Reseller under the bus when problems occur.

Expect the "new voip Manufacturer" to blame everyone other than their own equipment.

I've never been in favor of Unions, but I feel small Reseller interconect business owners like us need some kind of group protection in these times of changing technology.

Hal
I have the jeans and the white truck but still think that as long as we learn the new technology and implement it into our existing product lines, there will always be a large customer base that wants the local company that speaks English and knows the needs of their client.

What I find amusing is WHAT is required to make VOIP work reliably and all the simple little things that can bring it to its knees. This alone should give pause to someone that doesn't need VOIP. Take note, well sell VOIP and TDM systems. Luckilly I have been fortunate to work with VERY good IT personal at these locations and they "GET IT" and haven't implemented VOIP unless it was absolutely necessary after weighing everything.

Another thing i find hilarious is the monitoring features that these newbie voip setups talk up......and actually charge a monthly fee for....

So I'm driving along I-287 and my blackberry chirps......its an auto generated email telling me that customer XYZ has lost their internet connection..........

What is the point of this? do they think the people in Company XYZ are not totally aware that they can no longer make calls.......

This feature would be like me watching someone walk across a minefield, and then shout out to them that they have just lost their leg & 9 pints of blood....after they step on a mine.....

will always be a large customer base that wants the local company that speaks English and knows the needs of their client.

They already have that established in their IT staff or solution provider. The fact that VoIP utilizes the IT network infrastructure is the death knell for us. For any number of reasons the customer as well as the IT staff doesn't want their network to become a multiple responsibility.

If you need more evidence that manufacturers intend their equipment for the IT industry- it's no coincidence that VoIP systems are designed from the ground up to look like, operate and program like IT equipment. That's so it can be more easily assimilated into the IT knowledge base since it's something they are already familiar with. They could have packaged it and made it program and operate like traditional TDM systems, but the IT "professionals" would have a steep learning curve and if the manufacturers lost them they would have lost their foot-in-the-door because of the influence the IT people have.

I've never been in favor of Unions, but I feel small Reseller interconect business owners like us need some kind of group protection in these times of changing technology.

I've said that many times, we have no group or even a voice that represents us and makes our opinions and demands heard. We get crapped on by everything from internet sales to giving VoIP away to the IT industry.

So where are we going? If I were a young guy just starting out, this industry is certainly not something that I would consider. It would be like opening a TV repair business back in the 90's. Where are they now?

-Hal

Hal
My point is that until a company gets to a certain level they don't have IT staff. I think that most of us do network cabling as well as standard voice already. By hiring IT people into our companies WE are the IT Staff and evolve thus getting calls not only about voice problems but data as well. I work with many local IT professionals and trade leads back forth, or hire each other as needed at set hourly rates. At some point in time I assume we will share office space to become a one call shop.

All that is true, but it still leaves a HUGE base of small companies without IT staff of any kind.

And there are smaller hybrid systems that can do both packet and circuit switching that are good starting points for both reseller and customer.

What if an SMB without inhouse CGs insists on the new thing regardless of the disadvantages?

Also don't forget where the R&D money is going these days...I don't think that (technically) Voip is going to get worse, the opposite is true.

In all honesty Hal I think wireless communications will be the death of both. Already the kids don't talk on their IPhones, they just text and send pictures. We've noticed a sudden and increasing spike in hang ups on our customer's voice mail systems everywhere. The only thing we can attribute this to is the new hire employees, whom are young people, won't use voice mail.

I see this even among my employees, they'll text me versus calling me. It drives me crazy because I have to put my reading glasses on to see the phone. :bang:

I didn't really expect this much animosity when I started this thread. My sole reason was to point out some observations concerning VOIP implementation for the SMB customer. It's extremely obvious from the responses in this thread, even from the VOIP supporters, that VOIP isn't the proper solution for the small business.

Actually I realize now that VOIP is not going to have the market penetration on the small side that I was concerned about. Even the supporters here seem to kick out the "it runs fine on the same network" mantra that the VOIP salesmen preach or the simplicity and reliability of small key systems.

I had to laugh at the "the system calls you when the internet goes down" comment. I attending a sales presentation at one of my customers when the VOIP saleman said that. I pointed out to him the customer would be pretty stupid to not realize their 200+ phones quit working. It seemed about as silly as having one of my TDM switches call me when a PRI goes down, as if the customer doesn't already call me and bitch on their cell phone.

I think a few things need to happen here, simplified software, programming and wiring coupled with a true universal standard for SIP. Either that or back to the model of proprietary phones and control like the TDM manufacturers. 3com, Cisco, Allworx, etc seem to do relatively well following this idea. Like the SNOM site I linked to and commented on, endless firmware and software revisions on non standardized SIP trunking and VOIP implementations will be nothing but a mess on the open system VOIP implementations.

We see this already when a company's IT guys quit and the new hires spend huge amounts of time trying to figure out just what's going on with the IT structure. Consider they are dealing with pretty much standardized OS's on standardized network layers and protocol. They're dead if they come in cold on their IP system. Does anybody remember the endless versions and revisions on the SL1? It was a nightmare trying to remember and/or document what version/revision did what and was compatible with what. I see VOIP as being on the orders of magnitude worse unless somebody someplace requires universal standards for at least protocols.

I'll say this, the telcom business never gets boring. In some regards I think the TDM/VOIP debate is sort of like the endless Chevy/Ford debate, both forgot something else (wireless, Toyota) is out there. In our world I see future generations of an instrument similar to the IPhone being a huge threat to ALL of us. We may not use or understand it much but the kids coming up will be married to such a communication device, both for personal and business use. I've already installed a couple of switches with PRI's that do nothing but reroute calls to cell phones. The voice mail is purely an auto attendant. I believe there's already a number of hosted solutions to do the exact same thing.

Oh well, in another 6 or 7 years I won't have to worry about this any more.

I think that most of us do network cabling as well as standard voice already. By hiring IT people into our companies WE are the IT Staff and evolve thus getting calls not only about voice problems but data as well.

That's all well and good if you have the budget to hire dedicated IT people and want to become an IT company. If I was interested in IT I would have learned that myself. This is a telecom company.

My point is that until a company gets to a certain level they don't have IT staff...

...it still leaves a HUGE base of small companies without IT staff of any kind.

And my point is that those are the companies who would be better served by a TDM system but I digress.

Those companies may not have IT staff but all will have SOMEBODY available to maintain their computers and network. I had an old established customer just like that dump their Partner system that we sold them many years ago for VoIP. They never even asked us for a quote or told us what they were doing. They wanted VoIP, so their first instinct was to contact the CG who they call to work on their computers and he ran with it. Never mind that I'm an Avaya BP and could have given then an IPO. All they thought is that I'm a telephone guy and VoIP ain't telephone.

-Hal

Just quickly I'd like to correct my smartalecky comment from earlier, TDM is a multiplexing scheme not a modulation scheme.

Other than that, comparing TDM with VOIP is still incorrect, since they refer to different things.

We just use "TDM" as a generic term to refer to all analog and digital systems that are not VoIP. It's derived from those systems that actually do use time division multiplexing.

-Hal

If you visualize verizon wireless as a huge pbx with 80 million wireless extension's........

Now imagine if they put Hold, Vmail, Transfere, keys on their phones......

Then imagine a smb with 30 employees having 30 of these cell phones with their main number ringing into a auto attendant in verizons cloud......

If this ever happen's there is NO need to have a phone on your desk anymore.....

It's coming.

-Hal

Hal, it's already happening.

--Bill.

I have a Mitel 3000 system in my office with a voip broadband module and a remote ip phone at my home in another area code (long distance). I am not using sip trunks now (I had use of sip trunks for a year as part of the beta test for the broadband module). I have regular pots lines plugged into the system. So far the remote ip phone has been functioning flawlessley. I like being able make and receive calls as if I were actually in the office, as well as no long distance charges for incoming or outgoing calls within the office area code, when I am at my home during normal business hours. I like the design that the broadband module can be added to the "TDM" system as an option, if needed. I see potential for sales of the remote ip phone feature for customers who are away from the office or have remote workers. I have not had any customer requests for sip trunking.

IP systems and VoIP trunks - 2 different animals

There seems to be allot of confusion between VoIP and IP.

IP telephony is the system run over a local (intranet) LAN and VoIP is the SIP trunk running over the internet.

SIP trunking right now is overated.

The cost of long distance with POTS and PRI is now minimal with perfect quality.

The value of IP telephony is in the applications, remote employees and remote offices.

Let's not confuse the the two.

"The value of IP telephony is in the applications, remote employees and remote offices."

This statement seems to apply to my situation and my customer base, especially the reference to remote employees.

Actually, comparing VOIP to TDM is spot on, and is the very core of this debate. When we talk about TDM we are talking about a real-time digital stream, the tried and true method of digital transport for voice for over forty years now. VOIP is a completely different paradigm (yeah, I hate that word too, but it fits) in that it uses a packet based (not real-time) protocol to carry voice. This was first concieved of decades ago, but it was never viable in the past because we didn't have fast packet based networks with low enough latency to be usable. Now we sort of do...

Getting people to understand real-time vs. packet based can be a challenge. Try explaining to a CG netwoking type that a true T1/DS1 carrying voice channels has no error correction, forward or back. They think only in terms of packets, so the idea of an eight (or seven, back in the day) bit sample with a usable life span of 125 microseconds (1/8000 of a second, otherwise known as "right now") is something they can't wrap their heads around. They insist the idea is crazy, and not a good way to do it. I guess all those crystal-clear long distance calls we enjoyed for so long weren't as good as I thought they were. Sigh.

I think I just saw the horse move.

There seems to be allot of confusion between VoIP and IP... IP telephony is the system run over a local (intranet) LAN and VoIP is the SIP trunk running over the internet... SIP trunking right now is overated... The cost of long distance with POTS and PRI is now minimal with perfect quality... The value of IP telephony is in the applications, remote employees and remote offices.

Now there is something I can agree with.

-Hal

I am not against VOIP where warranted. I started withit back in 1999 with NBX. at the time I was partners with a company called Data Technologies, who handled networks and Data Recovery.
When I first saw the user GUI I went nuts over it
Talk about sweet. We put it the Dallas office then Houston, then London then Washington. This was on a closed Sprint Network.
They were easy to sell and setup. Then 3 Com bought them out and all hell broke loose. Any SW upgrade they came up with would crash the server, no recovery, you had to wipe and reload.
Put one in a medical environment and when they started to move those huge files, more hell.
Solution? Separate cable plant. The big selling point was one cable plant.
Promised upgrades did not happen. We got out but lost a couple shirts. So when they reared up a few years later I was skeptical.

I dislike them being sold where there is no need and also the CG's blinding them with BS.
A local county school transportation district bought into this a while back. The first Guinea pig was a facility with 15 admin people in a office, a mechanic shop and a tire shop and a huge parking lot. Existing system Panasonic DBS.
We did not install but had been caring for 10 bus barns for years. We get a call to this particular one for service. Tire shop phone are not working.
Great surprise to see Cisco phone on the desks of office people. Even more surprising was to see the Panasonic phones still there. First thing I had to ask was why? The response was the computer cannot access the paging system and there was no Voice page to each ext.
The parts guy is almost always running around the parts room and he used Voice announce a lot. Guys would just call and say what they needed and he could holler back. So they used the Panny for in house comm.
I checked with the tech people at the school district headquarters (they really don't know much).
The seller told them that voice announce was an upgrade license. Also that to use the public address they would need to buy a VOIP compatible paging system or get a paging server. They opted for the server but had to wait for the next budget cycle to purchase it. $4200.00
We had a meeting with those that would listen and explain that VOIP compatible paging system was mucho BS. Paging could be connected with a trunk port for a few hundred. The selling company would not authorize a trunk port for paging. So it stayed like that till next budget and they got the server. I think there is more BS being sold to end users than Carter has Liver Pills.
The lack of buttons did not go over well either.
The shop guys were used to touching one button
with their clean finger to get who they wanted.
Also the install was joke.

HAL Hal - I feel like I have conquered Mt. Everest, we agree on something concerning IP/VoIP :toast:

Not really. TDM is a multiplexing scheme. Its use in telephony is incidental, and it has found uses in many other applications before and after the advent of digital telephony.
Thre were digital communications before the advent of digital telephony, and they used multiplexing too. The main reason being that there were always more user demand than circuits. Another reason was that circuits were expensive. Data communications, from the late 1950s/early 1960s up until the advent of a viable packet transport, were circuit switched and synchronous, just like most digital telephony has been.
But unlike applications like real time voice or video which present a continuous stream, digital data by definition moves in some sort of packet - a set number of bits or bytes. As long as the packets arrive in the destination, the ORDER at which they arrive is immaterial. A device (the PAD - packet assembler/disassembler) will put them right. This is a tremendous advantage because you need not be concerned with the TIMING of the stream. Clocks don't matter. After all this is not real time traffic, and latency was acceptable. All of these are requirements that make T-Carrier what it is. Couple that with the fact that different computer/data communication systems used wildly different clocking/timing schemes.
It just happened that T-Carrier (originally a DATA transport) used time slots (TDM) to cram many DATA streams on a single circuit. It could have used a frequency based scheme like other transports.
Because Voip is a packet-switched application it uses different kinds of switches. These switches also do multiplexing - but nothing as elaborate as time-based muxing.
The thing is, continuous, real time streams are better suited to circuit-switched networks, ie transports that pre-establish a connection and keep it under tight control. In connection-less packet networks, the solutions so far (including "virtual circuit schemes" where packet traffic goes through pre-established connections) have been...inelegant.

The selling company would not authorize a trunk port for paging.

Of course not. Why would they let you supply and install a UPAM when they can sell them a $4200 server for friggin paging? This is insanity.

This is what I'm talking about. The greed and BS is out of control.

-Hal

WHAT?

Since when does the selling company control the sale?

There has to be more to that story.

Willing to bet the reason was they didn't want to provide a trunk port so somebody else can connect something to it. That will void the warranty.

-Hal

Yes, we are clearly moving (rapidly) to an all-packet based world. This is of course an economic decision for the reasons you cited.

However, I do beg to differ concerning the history of T-carrier. It was designed to carry voice from day 1, not data. It was concieved from the beginning to be the sucessor to the N- and O- FDM trunk systems of the day. Talking about clocks not mattering and packet re-assembly as a being "requirements that make T-Carrier what it is" is just plain wrong. T-Carrier is, was, and always will be a synchronous transport. Clocks and timing sources are one of the first things one looks at when a T1 goes down....

In fact, early attempts at using T1 to carry actual data resulted in all sorts of worm-cans being opened up. In the days before B8ZS, it was not easy to pump real binary data over a T1 without basically repackaging it into 7-bit bites. The reasons for this (and this whole digression) is swingly wildly off-topic though, so I'll sign off now.

Thank you, Jim, for the observation of being off topic. If you go to this thread, you may post to your hearts' content on the history and technology we are currently discussing.

Now, back on topic?

:read:

In our world I see future generations of an instrument similar to the IPhone being a huge threat to ALL of us.

I suggest that this could be a huge OPPORTUNITY. The fundamentals of voice communication won't go anywhere. Your experience with traditional voice (I'm talking in a general sense to the experienced folks on this board) can be leveraged to solve customers' problems wherever the technology goes.

With your permission, I'd like to say that Jim misunderstood me. I was pointing out that timing IS a requirement of T-Carrier (and other circuit switching transports). Secondly ALL digital transports are binary, ie DATA, and use data protocols. Voice being sampled into a data stream at the rates everyone in telecom is used to working with, that is at 64k or 56k.

Other than that, I disagree with Hal's outlook even while I agree with his analysis. As I mentioned before, your average CG is at a loss when it comes to VOIP. They usually know nothing or very little about telecom. It's like asking somebody supervising the intercom and the doorbell to install a telephone system.
This can, and has to be communicated to the customer.
Also: the main sticking point in my experience, with traditional telephony customers looking for a change (especially the last couple of years) is the cost of business lines or other centrex-type lines from the telco. They hear the siren call of cheap internet access, then they look at their telco phone bill with all the fixed costs, taxes, etc. It's hard to convince somebody of the longer-term ROI when their bill comes due every month. And the telcos are not helping. We can all figure out why, I think.

The CLECs around here will sell you a PRI/T1 in any configuration of voice/data for $299. We've used this against the SIP providers. Some of them will include another 10,000 minutes of LD for another $50.00.

We've heard we're the number one seller of PRI cards for the Comdial DX-120. This amazes me since we are a very small company.

Cost saving certainly isn't going to be the primary reason for VOIP around here. Where I see the slot for VOIP is for remote office applications.

I was refering to the smaller customers that I think Hal had in mind who don't have T1/PRI access. The price point you mention can be had in NYC too. We've several customers that pay in the ballpark, but this is not the traditional T1. It's usually a pseudowire (TDM-over-IP) scheme or some such, often with dynamic allocation of channels between data and voice. It does work nicely.

Ours are provided on either a #5ESS or a softswitch. We've learned to avoid softswitches like the plague if it's a PRI we need.

The dynamic seems to be OK unless you have 56k modems or fax machines. Sometimes they cause trouble with these devices, especially the modems. We ask for them to configure the copper channels for G711 which usually works.

We've been installing PRI cards on customers with as few as five lines. It's worked well and and the customers have been pleased to have DIDs and instant off net call forwarding with no degradation in call quality. Comdial DX-120 dealers have special pricing right now on PRI cards making this an extremely competitive option if you can get good pricing from the LEC/CLEC. It really makes the argument for SIP rather pointless.

True - but its much easier to take when it a true phone system manufacturer making the jump to the next technology...

It's much harder to take when its some CG's who are so proud that they made a network carry voice because its something it wasnt designed to do....

They use the sip protocol which limits features, because they dont understand why anybody would need all these silly features anyway....

Smartalecky comment #2:

All digital signaling happens in software, including SS7 signaling, irrespective of the of the hardware.
The difference is that the ATT (and other) SS switches are dedicated, single purpose computers for the most part, that run the switching software natively. In the case of what is mistakenly called "softswitch" the same switching software is run in different hardware as a "virtual" switching guest application.

I didn't know I offended anybody with my comment but we've had an absolute nightmare with PRI provided by softswitches. PRIs and T1s fail for no apparent reason

Don't even tell me that the "same" thing is being provided by a softswitch. Even some of the manufacturers when you call in to tech support ask you upfront if your PRI or T1 is being served by a softswitch. For a while Vertical was flat out saying they don't provide support if there's issues.

They may be getting better but they certainly aren't the same.

No, I meant MY smartalecky comment, which was that for a while now, all telecom switches have been "softswitches". That is, the vast majority of switching functions happen is software. The difference is this:

1. In the case of ESS and other such switches, the software runs natively, usually in special purpose hardware

2. In the case of what has erroneously been called "softswitching" the switching software runs in emulation mode or virtual mode in hardware that was not specifically built for this purpose.

I'd definitely agree that PRI is a no-no in emulation, and your carrier should be the first to admit it. Outside of PRI people do use emulated DS circuits for 2 reasons, in my experience: cost and dynamic data/voice.

BTW, my FIRST smartalecky comment in this thread was to point out that comparing TDM with VOIP was wrong. That was misunderstood too. Eh, what can you do.

Had a customer call and tell me he want a VOIP System so he could have the free long distance :rofl:

Cosmo

The problem I see is that Voip is the word in the industry. Good or Bad. As stated, most of the customers I have talked to don't understand what that means, they just know "everybody" is getting it and saving money. Sometimes you only get one shot in front of the prospective client, and if they already think they need Voip, they need Voip. If you spend you 5 minutes trashing Voip, you run the risk of appearing not to listen to their wants. I try to approach it from the hybrid model, showing the risk reduction> That doesn't always work either.

It is here to stay I think. Deal with it how you want. It's like having pneumonia and not going to the doctor. Ignoring it will most likely kill you in the end.

The other problem I see is there is no good place to get the education we need to properly install this stuff. At least not for me. I can't go back to college full time. Why don't one of you who are doing this and doing it well start giving classes for the TDM phone guy to learn the ip stuff as it relates to phone systems. We have looked at courses before, but I don't want to learn about windows, I want to know how to network stuff as it pertains to phone systems.

I always tell people I am a phone guy being dragged kicking and screaming into the computer world.

here's what iv'e experienced.....

Happy Voip Customer

Fortune 500 insurance company with 20 locations in NJ...pays us to run a totally new cat5e cable to every desk, installs totally new T1 for Voip, Installs totally seperate PoE switches & router. Plus new Polycom phone in at every desk. The new voip system NEVER comes into contact with their Data network.

ROI YES
Cheaper to Maintain Absolutley.


Unhappy VOIP Customer

Small business with 20 people hears about hype of Voip, Sleezy sales men from "New Rebadged Asterisk" company do impressive demo & tell small business owner it will work no problems over that cable modem, it will share the same cables & switches you currently have. 3 months after installation small business has same phones on desk as big company but is left frustrated that its not working to plan.

ROI Never
Cheaper to maintain?.....of course not, they end up spending way more.......


Look at the word Asterisk.......look at the last 4 letters........RISK................

WOW a lot of VOIP good and bad..

Aothing beats a digital phone system..

Deltron.
My background is Comdial/Vodavi. Since switching to Allworx, I have to say that Allworx (voip) is more reliable than any Tecom product ever was and is certainly as reliable as good quality TDM equipment like the Comdial MP5000. The anti-VOIP people will lose in the end! Packet switched over circuit switched is a huge advantage. I would never want to go back to TDM.

Wow this a is great thread and so representative of what a person hears out in the industry. I am accountant by training but phone and computer guy our of curiosity/necessity.

I configured and installed many computers both desktop and servers over the years. I also have my own Gopherpole, can wrench, butt set and know my way around a 66 block. I even have put in some twinax in my day.

If you want to know why VOIP systems are all the rage, I only have to look as far as the owner of our company. He goes to a meeting with other owners from our industry and hears about the great new VOIP system that someone just put in. That turns into one question to me - Are we going to put in a VOIP system when we replace our current system?

How do I even decipher the question much less distill an intelligent answer? I ended up giving him a 25 page bulleted presentation, starting with describing basic analog lines (2 cans and a string) all the way through PRI's and FTTP.

Then it was on to multi-line phones to PBX and VOIP.

I proceeded to explain that we had an existing, relatively new cable plant with separate home runs for both voice and data. Sadly, in a building built only 6 years ago, no one thought to spec running Cat5 or Cat5e for both the voice and data runs to provide some future proofing. Instead someone chose to save a few pennies a foot and run Cat3 for the voice. Doh!

I think by the end of the discussion he at least appreciated the time that it takes to stay current with the technology as well as the fact that I said a VOIP system may or may not be the right answer.

By the way did I mention our 7 locations and existing MPLS network?

Thanks again to everyone for sharing their perspectives.

You can tell who the data dicks are. They are the ones hammering VOIP, with little to no experience in telephony. They prey on the ignorant with three letter acronyms, that they don't even know what it means. The biggest lie in VOIP is that it is cheaper. You know why cisco sells VOIP. They don't have telephony experience to sell TDM sets, and their progaramming is a complete and utter joke. All They wantreally is to sell bigger switches and routers. Look at the cost of infrastructure. The Carpet baggers are out there saying see, my equipment is cheaper. Execept they conveiently forget about the cabling, POE switches and Routers necessary to support VOIP. It is the big lie in VOIP. The data predators are out there stealing all they can, and when they can't fix it, they dump it back on the Phone guy. Let's see, who should I buy? Avaya , NEC , Toshiba, Vodavi , etc that has been around many , many yeras, or should I buy a Talk Switch, allworx, Joe IP system. Look at the proliferation of thes scam IP Phone systems. It is totally buyer beware. The one thing that has not changed in my 35 years in the business has been , Computer dies bitch, Phone dies raise hell, and they lost XXX dollars. These Data dicks are in for a rude awakening.

Your skillset, apparently.

I'm the Moderator of this forum. I kept this thread open for discussion because I thought it generated some good ideas and good points about VOIP.

Using terms as "data dicks","carpet baggers", "data predators", "stealing"---is not the way good discussions are handled.

And there is no need for retaliation because your feelings get hurt.

I'm watching this thread very closely. PM'd members.