providers for phone line & internet
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@JaredBusch said:
@brianlittlejohn said:
I have had nothing but problems with a client that is on ATT's fiber Internet service... impossible to get support, once you do get ahold of someone it is days before they resolve issues.
I have a client on AT&T fiber and it has never been down. So I do not know how good or bad the support is.
I have a client on Charter fiber that has also never been down.
Both services I can recommend.
I would seriously look for a local fiber provider. I recently got a 50/50 fiber from Adams in Quincy, IL for $80/month.
As for phones, go with a SIP provider. I recommend VoIP.ms for a lot of things, but never used them with a call center volume of calls. @NetworkNerd can likely recommend a higher level support SIP vendor as I know he has used a few.
I wish FiOS was in our area. They are around us just not in our immediate area.
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Pretty much what @JaredBusch said about the phones also. We have google voice for our home line. You could either use a PBX or something like an Obihai which is $30. My parents have an Ooma, which seems nice but it's fairly expensive for the device.
Edit: I missed the call center part somehow. FreePBX is easy to set up and just get a SIP provider like @JaredBusch said.
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@scottalanmiller said:
You don't want a single company with the power to turn off your Internet AND your telephones at the same time.
But if you using a SIP line doesn't losing internet mean you use phones too?
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@anonymous said:
@scottalanmiller said:
You don't want a single company with the power to turn off your Internet AND your telephones at the same time.
But if you using a SIP line does it really matter?
Yes, if you get them from the same carrier it's exactly the same in every way.
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@anonymous said:
@scottalanmiller said:
You don't want a single company with the power to turn off your Internet AND your telephones at the same time.
But if you using a SIP line doesn't losing internet mean you use phones too?
You would most likely pay less having a second internet line for redundancy than paying an ISP for phone. We had comcast give us a price a few months ago (just for kicks) for their hosted PBX. It was going to be about $400 a month for internet and 8 extensions. Only 4 of those extensions have voicemail.
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@anonymous said:
@scottalanmiller said:
You don't want a single company with the power to turn off your Internet AND your telephones at the same time.
But if you using a SIP line doesn't losing internet mean you use phones too?
Additionally you can always connect to your SIP trunk from any other Internet connection if so desired. Instead of waiting for it to come up. SO if you are catastrophic down, you could spin up something on a hosted provider and connect and get calls.
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@JaredBusch said:
@anonymous said:
@scottalanmiller said:
You don't want a single company with the power to turn off your Internet AND your telephones at the same time.
But if you using a SIP line doesn't losing internet mean you use phones too?
Additionally you can always connect to your SIP trunk from any other Internet connection if so desired. Instead of waiting for it to come up. SO if you are catastrophic down, you could spin up something on a hosted provider and connect and get calls.
Unless you get the SIP from the ISP, then normally they lock it to only coming over their own lines, hence the risk of the "all in one".
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@JaredBusch
We use in-house PBX system so SIP is not an option at the moment. Because we use internet and making calls all day, we fear bandwidth may cause the call quality degraded. Our Phone & Internet are two separate services. -
@LAH3385 said:
@JaredBusch
We use in-house PBX system so SIP is not an option at the moment.How does that work? We do in house PBX all the time with SIP, why would in house PBX stop you from using SIP? And why would you run anything that didn't use SIP?
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@LAH3385 said:
Our Phone & Internet are two separate services.
That's fine, but it should still be SIP. There are no downsides to SIP, only upsides due to legal entanglements to legacy phone lines in the US. SIP can always be superior, even if you do it over a dedicated line as the taxes are lower and the quality is higher.
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@scottalanmiller
The phone is SIP capable. We just didn't opt-in for SIP card. We still use PRIs.
We were locked in contract for PRIs with Logix. That ends on November. -
@LAH3385 said:
@JaredBusch
We use in-house PBX system so SIP is not an option at the moment. Because we use internet and making calls all day, we fear bandwidth may cause the call quality degraded. Our Phone & Internet are two separate services.If you feel that your phones are important, which it seems that you would if you spend this much on them, how do you handle failover if your PBX fails, the hardware fails, the line fails or the ISP fails?
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@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
The phone is SIP capable. We just didn't opt-in for SIP card. We still use PRIs.Why would a PBX be physical and why would you need a SIP card? Is this like a PBX from the 1990s?
A PBX is just another server, the more important it is, the more important it is that you treat it that way and have it be a VM, not have a PRI, etc. PRI just adds cost and risk. There are no upsides to it on a technical level.
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@scottalanmiller
At the time of upgrading we didn't have an option due to contract with Logix on PRIs.
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@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
At the time of upgrading we didn't have an option due to contract with Logix on PRIs.A contract with a physical carrier? This is what I was warning about. Never get the line and the phone service from the same company. You have already, apparently, been caught by them leveraging a contract to screw you for a long time. Was this a contract going back like a decade? What is keeping you from moving to something modern now?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
At the time of upgrading we didn't have an option due to contract with Logix on PRIs.A contract with a physical carrier? This is what I was warning about. Never get the line and the phone service from the same company. You have already, apparently, been caught by them leveraging a contract to screw you for a long time. Was this a contract going back like a decade? What is keeping you from moving to something modern now?
It was 6 years contract and it is going to end this November.
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Wow, a six year contract. Eek!
No question, drop that vendor and get to SIP ASAP. Move to a serious enterprise PBX running in a VM that you can protect like other important gear. Traditional PBXs (like from the 1980s) are often treated like desktops - no protection and everyone just hopes for the best. Time to treat VoIP as if it is at least half as important as the file server or Active Directory.
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@scottalanmiller
Adding more information here.. Our phone system is NEC SV9100. It is said to be IP-PBX. I may not use the right term and causing confusion. But it is a terminal with Pri cards. Hope that clear the confusionYes. If possible we will be looking into a better redundancy.
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@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
Adding more information here.. Our phone system is NEC SV9100. It is said to be IP-PBX. I may not use the right term and causing confusion. But it is a terminal with Pri cards. Hope that clear the confusionYes, as far as I know, NEC is a legacy only PBX vendor. No one talks about them in terms of modern telephony, only for supporting old stuff.
Modern PBX vendors are typically the Asterisk family (Elastix, FreePBX, PIAF, etc.), 3CX, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, and similar. But if you go with any vendor that has a physical device you are stuck, at least partially, in an old mindset and model.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
Adding more information here.. Our phone system is NEC SV9100. It is said to be IP-PBX. I may not use the right term and causing confusion. But it is a terminal with Pri cards. Hope that clear the confusionYes, as far as I know, NEC is a legacy only PBX vendor. No one talks about them in terms of modern telephony, only for supporting old stuff.
Modern PBX vendors are typically the Asterisk family (Elastix, FreePBX, PIAF, etc.), 3CX, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, and similar. But if you go with any vendor that has a physical device you are stuck, at least partially, in an old mindset and model.
That place I just interviewed has Mitel, he said they can't get away from them (didn't explain why and I didn't ask).
