Toshiba Phone System

Web based telephone systems have increased in popularity, what are the pros/cons of using a VOIP system?

Public Comments

1. CONS: Power Failures Computer Crashes Internet Provider Goes Down PROS: Cost Savings
2. PROS: wiring infrastructure costs: each desk only requires a single CAT5 wire for PC and Phone (although it is recommended that each desk have a seperate CAT5 for PC and Phone) equipment infrastructure costs: VoIP phones do not require additional on site hardware, other than the network equipment already installed on your site. No more need to buy proprietary phones that will only work with your PBX - just about all VoIP phones are compatible with all of the VoIP providers available today. Less maintenance: most changes to your system can be completed by yourself with a web interface, or from your provider remotely. no need to have a tech come out to maintanace your PBX system every time you want to change or add an extension, to change your IVR prompts, or add or remove voicemail boxes. scale-ability: no longer are you limited by the amount of CO lines, or extensions that your PBX can handle before a costly upgrade. as long as your LAN and internet connection are up to the task you can have virtually an unlimited number of extensions ability to transfer a caller to an outside line with out the need to tie up two of your CO lines OPX - off premise extensions - while with POTS you could have OPX set up, you require an expensive dedicated circuit from the telephone company, distance effects the quality of the calls, and all of your OPX are locked to a single location.... with VoIP you can bring your phone anywhere that there is an internet connection and continue to use your phone just as if you were still in the office (or at home) cost of service - this is usually the main or only reason why people are interested in VoIP. local, long distance and international calls are much cheaper over VoIP than POTS time to live... when you go with a VoIP provider, you can have your DIDs set up right away, and have your service live the day you order service (as long as you have the phones already) with POTS the phone company usually takes about 5 days before they come in to install your line - that does not include the time that it will take for your phone system vendor to install and configure your PBX system. calling features.. you can do just about anything that you can imagine as far as calling features go when it comes to VoIP... with POTS you are limited by whatever your carrier provides to you, and what features your phone system has available to you. every additional feature from the phone company usually cost more, and additional features on your PBX are going to cost time and materials for a tech to upgrade your system.. there are many other reasons why you might want to consider a VoIP system, these are just the few that I can think of... CONS: pretty much all of the cons have a solution to not make them cons any more... single point of failure - if your internet service goes down, then so to do all of your lines. in a residential application, big deal, if your internet is down chances are that if you were on POTS your phone line would be down as well... for businesses to eliminate this problem use multiple internet service providers (i prefer of different technologies such as one cable, one DSL) and connect everything to a multi-WAN fail-over router. when one internet goes out, the other one will pick up the connection - active calls may be dropped during the change over, but your service will only blip out for a second if they do at all - DO NOT set the multi-WAN router that the VoIP phones connect to as load balancing, you will have issues with the phones maintaining registration with the servers. POTS works in a power outage, VoIP does not - solution to resolve this - get the best UPS that you can afford, with the longest back up time possible, connect your modem, router, and other network equipment to the UPS and use a PoE switch for the phones instead of local power (unless you want a UPS at each desk) call quality is dependent upon your internet connection - in larger businesses with many phones and PCs it is best to isolate the PC network and the VoIP network (which goes back to the first thing i said about each desk should ideally have 2 CAT5 connections) each should connect to its own internet connection. i prefer to do this physically to reduce any other possible issues on the LAN side, but with most multi-WAN routers you can set them up so that the phones use one of the internet connections connected to the router, while the PCs use the other internet... most quality issues are a result of a poor internet connection, either not enough speed for the amount of phones, or high jitter or latency. in conclusion, there is really no bad reason to not switch to VoIP... most of the soloutions to the CONS should already be things that are implemented on your network, or already planned for when installing a new network..