VoIP Newbie Questions

[karldenton]

Hello

 

Our phone system is 25 years old now - an old Siemens hicom 150e. The cables and equipment are slowly deteriorating and I'd like to update it to VOIP.

 

Couple of newbie questions:-

 

Do you need an additional network point in each room that you would like a phone?

Which is specific software you need on server to make them run?

 

The easiest option would be to get usb phones for the computers - is that possible and have a central piece of software that connects them all ? This would be my preferred option.

 

Thanks

 

Karl

[mavhc]

We've had the CISCO Voip system for over 5 years now, some models of their phones have a 2 port switch in the back specifically so you don't need extra ports installed. And the software runs on their router shaped appliance.

 

I'd suggest having stand alone phones in offices/staff room, keeps things simple, but have an option of software phones on laptops/smartphones for teachers/technicians who are often in different physical places.

 

It would seem to be handy to allow every staff member their own extension number with voicemail, so you don't have to have someone writing messages etc. Voicemail should be sent to the users as email. The clever part would be to automate sending calls to teachers straight to voicemail when the timetable says they're in class.

 

I've not got any specific suggestions as to non cisco solutions.

 

Many people are looking at MS Lync, which is free with the free Office365 for education AIUI

[MatthewL]

Avaya would be the way I go forward.

 

You could get it to divert calls at certain times of the day and have calls forward to say their mobiles and then if they wanted to make a call out use an app on their phone which calls it through the Avaya system. Worth a look.

[plexer]

Many people are looking at MS Lync, which is free with the free Office365 for education AIUI

 

Not for corporate voice it isn't.

 

Ben

[plexer]

Hello

 

Our phone system is 25 years old now - an old Siemens hicom 150e. The cables and equipment are slowly deteriorating and I'd like to update it to VOIP.

 

You'd like to or you've been asked to investigate this as an option?

 

There are a huge range of options and multiple ways to achieve this.

 

Ben

[bclarke]

We changed our old Norstar to 3CX and also use a SIP provider to reduce costs even further by sending our calls out over our broadband. We got ours through Trilan whose support is second to none.

 

Phones also have two LAN ports, one for the network and another acts as a switch to connect to the PC so you only need one network point per office. You can get wifi phones and payphones if needed too.

 

3CX is a great value system which comes with so many options as standard that other systems from big players ask so much more money for.

[twin--turbo]

Good old system the 150, we moved on 5 years ago. We had looked at HIPATH from Simens but went to a full new cisco deploymnet.

 

There are many other Hybrid systems out ther from Avaya, Samsung, etc. and many pure IP systems like the Cisco's

 

You normaly have

the server that handles call management ( but not the actual call traffic )

the handsets

VOIP station licences ( a gotcha for many )

and line cards to connect to the telephone network.

 

Ideally voice traffic should be on it's own network for call quality, this could either be a physicaly seperate or using vlans. You can't use Cat3 bell wire so will either have to have new network points installed or if your network supports it use the vlans and passthrough port on the phone as mentioned above ( if it has one ).

 

If you want something as reliable as the Hicom should be ( I doubt it's 25 years old mode like 18 at most ) then you need a proper solution.

 

There are free call management options such asa 3CX and Astrix(free pbx) both do come with comercial support if you want to go down that route.

 

Next up the cost scale would be Something like a Samsung Officeserv Hybrid.

 

the Cisco UC500 is a gr8 little phone system too and bridges between the likes of the above and full blown enterprise systems liek our own Cisco Unified Communications Manager ( scalable to 70'000 users , it was somewhat over spec! )

 

Rob

[twin--turbo]

Beat me to it on the 3CX punt

[plexer]

@twin--turbo Astrix or Asterisk?

 

Ben

[mac_shinobi]

@twin--turbo Astrix or Asterisk?

 

Ben

 

Astrix and Obelix. :-P

[twin--turbo]

Astrix and Obelix. :-P

 

I can never get it right for some reason, the image of the little fella is always in my minds eye when I think of it so always put it down wrong LOL.. it's quit gauling sometimes..

 

Rob

[ryoung]

Another newbie question but what sort of ROUGH ball park figure are we talking about here to upgrade say 80 phone PBX system some 15 years old?

[Millgate]

Hi @karldenton & @ryoung,

 

We supply telephone systems as well as IT so I can get one of our guys to give you a call/come and see you and talk through a few options. Drop me an email - [email protected]

[dhicks]

Another newbie question but what sort of ROUGH ball park figure are we talking about here to upgrade say 80 phone PBX system some 15 years old?

 

We installed an IQ PBX system over the summer - a dedicated VoIP appliance based on Asterisk. Cost, inluding appliance, 60-ish phones and a couple of thousand pounds worth of consultant's time to help with installation was around £10,000. We added additional network points in each classroom for phones, which obviously cost some more, but the phones do come with pass-through network connections. Note that those pass-through connections tend to only work at 100 megabit speeds - going up to gigabit costs a fair bit more (for no good technical reason that I can think of, either). We also bought all-new PoE-capable switches to power the phones, which added another cost, but you might already have those or simply use power adaptors for each phone. They take 5V input, and seem to run okay off plug-in USB power adaptors, so you could probably power them from a PCs USB port, just buy a bunch of USB to 5V barrel connector cables.

 

I'm not sure I'd really recommend IQ PBX - we had some issues setting it up (poor quality phone calls), and we didn't get much useful help from IQ PBX themselves. You might as well go for a plain Asterisk system that you put together yourself and save some money, or spend just a little more and go for 3CX.

Edited October 28, 2013 by dhicks

[ryoung]

Thanks David - a REALLY helpful reply. Did you think about using Microsoft Lync? We are going down the Office 365 route and our ecosystem is Microsoft.

[cpjitservices]

Asterisk and FreePBX here with Vertical Handsets.

 

Asterisk.org

[john]

If I was to replace now I would look at using MS Lync particularly if you have a very MS centred system it is just brilliant how it all Lyncs into everything else I am really impressed with it

[mac_shinobi]

I can never get it right for some reason, the image of the little fella is always in my minds eye when I think of it so always put it down wrong LOL.. it's quit gauling sometimes..

 

Rob

 

 

I was thinking of that little blonde guy lol

[dhicks]

Did you think about using Microsoft Lync?

 

I think the IQ PBX (and, I think, standard Asterisk / FreePBX installs) will actually integrate with Lync okay, it's not something that we've looked at.