VoIP for small businesses

My uncle has a small family practicioner’s office, and has just recently actually “hired” me to set up a network and redo the phone systems there. I cat 6’d the entire office a couple weeks ago, network is set up, DSL is set up, but now - VoIP - would save a bunch of money (they have 5 lines).

Now i dunno if I want to go with vonage, or something else? Just wondering how VoIP has been for any of you small business owners, if you use it.

we’re jsut about to switch over to it

Attn: Dozr

we have about ten lines here at work, its the cheapest place in the universe. We have voip with freepbx.org software running the extensions.

Not sure of the isp.

ill ask shaq… i think its called ip office.

What’s the up/down on the DSL he’s got?

A real good quality voip call is about 90k up and down. * 5 lines thats 450k of bandwidth you’re using just on voice.

we use ShoreTel at work…

http://www.shoretel.com/products/

Jay is right, you need anywhere from a 20kps-90kps pipeline per call, depending on what codec you are using.

Does your uncle make many long distance or international calls? Does he have more than one location?

If the answers are false, your best bet is to probably stick with what he has. Local calls are almost the same cost on voip as they are on standard POTS/PSTN.

Even if he went voip, you would probably want to retain 1-2 pots lines for 911 use, backup incase of power failure, fax machines, etc.

If you need anything, or any equipment, let me know.

you know whats sad is i answer calls all day and the worst quality sounding calls are by far are those that have voip…

Voip is all about your internet connection. If it’s good, the call is good. I’ve had Vonage for almost 3 years now and the only time I’ve ever had sound quality issues was when Adelphia or Time Warner fucked something up.

so quite frequently lol

Well, when it was Adelphia, almost never in 2 years.

Since TW took over, yeah, it’s sucked.

bump… updates?