New Phone System recommendations

[timbo343]

We have a phone system which is nearly as old as me and needs to be replaced. We have a Siemens system with analogue and digital lines with a separate voicemail system and 8x ISDN30 lines coming into the school.

 

I was wondering what your school is running with at the moment, is it any good and who did you buy it from.

 

Thanks

Edited December 2, 2015 by timbo343

[robk]

That sounds like a Siemens Hipath system? Might be worth looking at sip trunks rather than ISDN 30 (guess what I was talking to a telco supply about this afternoon...) Are you looking at loads of extensions or would something like Lync or hosted Voip be a possibility?

[timbo343]

Im not sure on the model as ive had very little to do with it but now its up for discussion im now involved in it.

 

We would be looking for onsite rather than hosted, 8x SIP trunks have been suggested over ISDN30 lines and we currently have about 60 extensions and with phones everyone wants one.

 

A samsung and mitel systems have been recommended in the past.

[psydii]

Try these people:

http://www.mycommunications.co.uk

[SchoolsBroadband]

@timbo343

 

We've a lot of stock of spare handsets at the moment. I can guarantee to reduce your ongoing costs. System is mitel based.

 

Send me a pm if interested? Thinking about it are you a customer of ours already?!

 

Dave

[bclarke]

3CX here through TRILAN IT. Very pleased with loads of savings to be made. Great system and fully featured. I have written a lot about this system and recommended to loads of people.

[john]

Lync with Enterprise Voice its great I'd not look at a full PBX anymore after working with this management is simpler and its all integrated with Exchange so voicemail in that etc its great

[NB9457]

Anyone using Skype for Business in their schools? It's free but I assume it'd always require net access, even internally?

[Blue_Cookeh]

Anyone using Skype for Business in their schools? It's free but I assume it'd always require net access, even internally?

 

Yes if you're using the Office365 version. Of course, you could go down the painful route of an on-premise deployment

[john]

Anyone using Skype for Business in their schools? It's free but I assume it'd always require net access, even internally?

 

If you do it on-premis rather than cloud nope no internet needed for your own site to keep going. If you do it cloud then yep you need internet to the cloud...

 

As for "painful" route to deploy, its really not that painful if your a simple setup which most stand alone schools would be a standard deploy would work perfectly well and be cheap as chips with Edu Licensing. Bash in some Snom or Polycom handsets and off you go.

Edited December 3, 2015 by john

[jtoland]

We use 3CX and have nether looked back. it runs perfectly and not had a single problem with it we have it running on a VM and does everything we need it to do and more. the nice thing is that when we put people on hold it plays music and is much a nicer experience for the end user with this feature.

[Snuffkins]

+1 for Lync. We're in the process of moving over to it. In testing at the moment. Planning takes a while, but the actual setup after that is fairly straight forward. I'd got no previous experience with it, but haven't come across any problems so far doing the work in-house, well apart from time...

 

The only big cost to consider is handsets for us, but that's the same with most system changes. It does still work out very cost effective if you can keep the work in-house or at least the majority of it.

 

We also use SIP over our broadband, so obviously for external calls an outage would effect us, although we do have a back-up leased line and haven't had an outage with that since it was put in over a year ago. Very cost effective compared to ISDN or at least it was when we changed over about 5 years ago.

 

I know it's a decade away, but they're phasing ISDN out anyway so it would be worth making that move.

Edited December 3, 2015 by Snuffkins

[tekins]

We are looking at BT's Onephone system BT One Phone - Virtual Phone System Service | BT Business

[IrritableTech]

@timbo343 SIP trunks are great but I found they weren't for us. We ended up using ISDN30. The issue we found was unless your telecommunications/SIP provider also provides your broadband they're generally not keen on working with each other. Imagine if you had call quality issues - they could easily point the finger of blame at each other.

 

We bought a IP based system from a provider in Leeds who I really can't fault.

Edited December 3, 2015 by IrritableTech

[ITGURU]

We have a Siemens OpenStage system here. 60 extensions all on VOIP VLAN and Main gateway box is connected to 6x ISDN lines. Only issue we've had it storms taking out the ISDN boxes, luckily only 1 each time out the 3.

[john]

+1 for Lync. We're in the process of moving over to it. In testing at the moment. Planning takes a while, but the actual setup after that is fairly straight forward. I'd got no previous experience with it, but haven't come across any problems so far doing the work in-house, well apart from time...

 

The only big cost to consider is handsets for us, but that's the same with most system changes. It does still work out very cost effective if you can keep the work in-house or at least the majority of it.

 

We also use SIP over our broadband, so obviously for external calls an outage would effect us, although we do have a back-up leased line and haven't had an outage with that since it was put in over a year ago. Very cost effective compared to ISDN or at least it was when we changed over about 5 years ago.

 

I know it's a decade away, but they're phasing ISDN out anyway so it would be worth making that move.

 

Handsets is always the bugbare, my suggestion for speed and simplicity is stick to the fully certified ones that run Lync on them such as Polycom CX300,600 etc... these just work if you plug the USB in to a PC which the user uses. The compatible ones such as the Polycom VVX are just awful, got a VVX here for testing and its back in its box it was that bad, however the Snom range of phones is nice and I do like them and have a Snom on my desk now and its great has hot keys for dialing etc out of the box so goes great for those trying to replace a traditional digital handset for users who cannot cope with the S4B client on the PC. Our standard procedure is just a Lync Certified headset for all users and if they need a phone to ask for it but most don't bother.

[dgsmith]

3CX here through TRILAN IT. Very pleased with loads of savings to be made. Great system and fully featured. I have written a lot about this system and recommended to loads of people.

 

As above. When I was researching this last year, I called and emailed quite a lot of schools (including bclarke and a few others on edugeek!) and didn't have a single bit of bad or concerning feedback. The only negatives where from companies trying to sell competing systems.. not suspicious at all(!)

 

Suffice to say we have not looked back either. Fantastic system, wide range of SIP phones to choose from, fantastic price, loads of features often only available on premium systems and no annual licence/ongoing fee.. just pay for max concurrent calls (which is a good way of doing it).

[DrCheese]

How much is it? I've been getting wildly different quotes for PBX/IP solutions, most around 14k to 17k for a new PBX & 80 odd handsets.

[dgsmith]

How much is it? I've been getting wildly different quotes for PBX/IP solutions, most around 14k to 17k for a new PBX & 80 odd handsets.

 

Not sure what you refer to, but our 3CX project fitted around a £3.5k budget with a bit left over; this included the one-off 3cx license fee, first year annual support + maintenance, HP managed gigabit POE switch (albeit refurbished) and 50 yealink handsets (12 with gigabit) - the bulk of the cost were the handsets. We further saved moving the phone lines to SIP which helped get the funds for the project overall, as it would pay for itself in time. The "PBX" is virtual and on its own vlan - after the initial vlan config issues were overcome (which had nothing to do with the phone system), I must say we have been extremely happy.

[DrCheese]

ah yes, that's what I was referring too. That's a *huge* difference in cost! We currently have a Nortel BCM450 that I pay £850 a year for support on & our phone bills are around £500 per month, which I consider quite high. Do you keep any analogue lines around as backup & do you run it over your standard connection or a seperate ASDL line?

[dgsmith]

ah yes, that's what I was referring too. That's a *huge* difference in cost! We currently have a Nortel BCM450 that I pay £850 a year for support on & our phone bills are around £500 per month, which I consider quite high. Do you keep any analogue lines around as backup & do you run it over your standard connection or a seperate ASDL line?

 

Support cost with a partner reseller is around £360 a year or £180 if direct with 3CX. Phones bills have from £200-£250 a month to £90-£120 a month (that is big for us and represents an average 50% saving alone). The phone bill savings are of course due to our change of phone line provider, or rather specifically move to an alternate SIP provider which 3cx facilitates.

 

We scrapped all analogue lines for the main voice communication, but do have an analogue backup line for our leased broadband line (for receiving calls if desperately urgently) and retained the analogue line for the alarm line (which can double up as a two-way voice line too). We never had ADSL, only PSTN so the savings have been even more significant.

 

Having a non-proprietry system works very well for us and personally speaking I don't always favour the "vendor lock-in" approach you have to sign up to on many systems, where the choice of handset is limited and most have some kind of annual/ongoing cost depending on number of extentions. Don't be put off by scary anti-sales talk about how 3cx isn't a "real" system or it isn't reliable, solid, well supported etc.. it's nonsense and I spent a fair bit of time doing research and getting feedback on 3cx before making the suggestion as the favoured solution.

Edited December 6, 2015 by dgsmith

[karldenton]

We've gone with hosted VoIP, mainly because we have off-site premises as well. Our handsets are Yealink. The service has its own broadband line and each phone is patched into a different switch so doesn't touch the school network.

[HPlum78]

Skype 4 Business with SIP Trunk is what I would say, loads of options for phones when using Skype including turning your smart phone into your extension and your laptops..... you get the drift. Also if you integrate it into Exchange you have a whole host of very good call routing options and out of hours services and the like. Its all based on products from MS so the learning curve is not so bad (although VoIP is a little complex!)

[Wave9_Lee]

If anyone is interested in a quote for a hosted system, then we'd be happy to provide some pricing and guidance.

 

regards

 

Lee

[timbo343]

Can anyone tell me the difference between a Samsung system and a LG system? We have a few companies who are either quoting for a samsung system or a LG system but i cannot find any information that compares the 2 so was wondering if anyone on here could help.

 

Thanks