Is VOIP ready for prime time?

[M_Lyons10]

Hi everyone. My job is looking into switching to VOIP and they want my involvement, but I don't really know much about VOIP so I figured I would ask. They're of course talking to some people that say that it is, but of course they're going to say that... They want to sell us equipment... But I figured the Neowin members are pretty knowledgeable so I could trust their information.

So, is VOIP ready for adoption in a corporate environment? Of course up-time, call clarity, call forwarding, call transferring, and reliability is all very important. A company can't really afford to miss a phone call. We would also have several lines as well, as we do now.

I really don't know a heck of a lot about VOIP. I've been reading up a bit on it of course, but I don't know anyone who's actually rolled out a VOIP system. I'm not sure what I should know going into this, what issues may be involved which I wouldn't think of, etc. So I'm asking everyone their opinion. Any and all information is greatly appreciated.

Thanks Again, I'm very curious to hear what everyone has to say.

-Matt-

[sc302 Veteran]

I have not read everything that u wrote but bottom line is that yes it is ready for a corp inv.

Vonage is based off of voip. The comcase tripple play is based off of voip, verizon fios phone service is based off of voip. So it would be safe to say a corp phone system can be voip based.

I said it years ago when it really was in its infancy before vonage came out that it was the future of phone service.

[Sophism]

A corp phone system *should* be VOIP at this point. For a company looking at a new phone system there is *no* reason it should not be a VOIP system.

[M_Lyons10]

Thank you both very much for your responses. I really appreciate it. What if there is some slow down on the DSL line, or one or several users are downloading large files, or something? The fact that this uses the internet line for the conversations is a concern for me. I don't know much about this. They did say that we could use our current phones, so that's a plus. Do you think DSL is fast enough? Or do we need something faster? How much bandwidth should we have?

Thanks Again,

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

It depends on the size of the company, If a plain DSL connection is enough to handle everybody then the company just wouldn't be that large. Of course, you could get multiple DSL connections, one for VOIP and one for everything else.

[IrfanL]

Nothing is going to be fast enough. But what you should be primarily looking at is QoS. Well designed QoS policy will make sure that you will always have required bandwidth for your voice/video traffic. Do some home work on these technologies and how they best work together, before you go ahead with a solution.

From your post its not clear whether you are going for single site or multiple sites implementation. However, a voice call will take somewhere between 8Kbps to 64Kbps depending on sampling and quality you are looking for. You also have ability to setup a quota for simultanious voice call, this can help in avoiding the overloading of the WAN links.

Another important point you should consider is whether to go for industry standard VoIP solution or proprietary VoIP solution. Propriety solution allow vendors to add more features & functions into their devices but locking you into a specific vendor. With industry standarized solution you have the ability of going across different vendors but you will be getting only basic features and functionality.

[themew]

Hi everyone. My job is looking into switching to VOIP and they want my involvement, but I don't really know much about VOIP so I figured I would ask. They're of course talking to some people that say that it is, but of course they're going to say that... They want to sell us equipment... But I figured the Neowin members are pretty knowledgeable so I could trust their information.

So, is VOIP ready for adoption in a corporate environment? Of course up-time, call clarity, call forwarding, call transferring, and reliability is all very important. A company can't really afford to miss a phone call. We would also have several lines as well, as we do now.

I really don't know a heck of a lot about VOIP. I've been reading up a bit on it of course, but I don't know anyone who's actually rolled out a VOIP system. I'm not sure what I should know going into this, what issues may be involved which I wouldn't think of, etc. So I'm asking everyone their opinion. Any and all information is greatly appreciated.

Thanks Again, I'm very curious to hear what everyone has to say.

-Matt-

We mainly use mobile wifi phones in our office, like the SC-6060S from www.yippz.com. They work great anywhere in the office. can be taken on the road, and sound much better than our old phone lines and cell phones (with no monthly massive cell bills). We also have several office Voip phones that do pretty much anything you would want an office phone do to. Most features are dependent on which voip provider you choose. Voip service is SO cheap now that any company can save hundreds in the first month.

Unlike Voip several years ago, sound and reliability are nearly perfect these days.

[M_Lyons10]

Nothing is going to be fast enough. But what you should be primarily looking at is QoS. Well designed QoS policy will make sure that you will always have required bandwidth for your voice/video traffic. Do some home work on these technologies and how they best work together, before you go ahead with a solution.

From your post its not clear whether you are going for single site or multiple sites implementation. However, a voice call will take somewhere between 8Kbps to 64Kbps depending on sampling and quality you are looking for. You also have ability to setup a quota for simultanious voice call, this can help in avoiding the overloading of the WAN links.

Another important point you should consider is whether to go for industry standard VoIP solution or proprietary VoIP solution. Propriety solution allow vendors to add more features & functions into their devices but locking you into a specific vendor. With industry standarized solution you have the ability of going across different vendors but you will be getting only basic features and functionality.

Wow, thank you VERY much for your great response. That was really very helpful. I wasn't even aware that I had to decide between a proprietary solution and a standard solution... I guess a standard solution probably makes the most sense really, doesn't it? We've been locked into systems in the past, and that just never seems to work out in the end.

When I spoke to the one VOIP company the other day on the phone they said that they did 16 kb's a phone call, but they didn't seem to be very confident about their explanations of things, so I'm not sure. We would be looking at a single site implementation I would imagine, as we only have the main office. But they told us that if we took the phone to our home and connected it to our router there that we would be able to use that phone then as if we were at the office.

I am going to research those technologies you mentioned as well. I've never heard of them before. This is all new to me, and I don't want to make any noobish mistakes...

We mainly use mobile wifi phones in our office, like the SC-6060S from www.yippz.com. They work great anywhere in the office. can be taken on the road, and sound much better than our old phone lines and cell phones (with no monthly massive cell bills). We also have several office Voip phones that do pretty much anything you would want an office phone do to. Most features are dependent on which voip provider you choose. Voip service is SO cheap now that any company can save hundreds in the first month.

Unlike Voip several years ago, sound and reliability are nearly perfect these days.

Thank you very much for that suggestion. I am DEFINITELY going to consider that. That sounds like a really good idea. Then we just tell the VOIP company that that's the phone we have and they set them up? I really like that idea. The time and expense it saves in laying phone lines (And connecting them to the router) seems to be well worth it. Does that phone support encryption? Our network at the office is security enabled. It sounds like you can set it up with different profiles, so if you were at the office it would connect, at home it would connect, etc. without any setup. That is a very nice feature (If I'm understanding it correctly).

Thanks Again everyone for all of your help. It's been invaluable really. I've learned a lot.

It depends on the size of the company, If a plain DSL connection is enough to handle everybody then the company just wouldn't be that large. Of course, you could get multiple DSL connections, one for VOIP and one for everything else.

Thanks for your suggestion too. Getting a second DSL line is definitely cheaper than upgrading to T1 or something.