Phone Systems

[Edu-IT]

Now they can afford to pay them £95/month more.

 

Phones do tend to just work forever, it's the setup that takes time.

 

If they've outsourced it they still have no support on site.

No but if the server / software running it is offsite, it’s irrelevant? Chances are it’s going to be server/software side with phones if they go wrong. You contact the company and they sort it. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t on site in that scenario. If they think it’s handset based they’ll be able to troubleshoot that remotely or by talking somebody non-technical through it.

 

Again I can’t help but get this feeling you post flippant comments for the fun of it.

[mavhc]

No but if the server / software running it is offsite, it’s irrelevant? Chances are it’s going to be server/software side with phones if they go wrong. You contact the company and they sort it. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t on site in that scenario. If they think it’s handset based they’ll be able to troubleshoot that remotely or by talking somebody non-technical through it.

 

Again I can’t help but get this feeling you post flippant comments for the fun of it.

 

Well, based on what I've seen hosted voip people offer, it's usually the network/internet configuration that goes wrong, which is why they want to provide internet and run your router half the time.

 

I'm just pro IT support people, outsourcing means you're not advancing your own career. Now I know all about voip, buying voip services, buying fiber internet, configuring firewalls, configuring phones, so I'm better qualified, and the school has saved money, win win.

 

Hosted voip is a genius business to be in, costs you basically nothing, rake in the profits. You can tell because everyone is doing it.

 

Plus I found out how cheap it should be, so making sure everyone knows to get their prices lowered. Remember: having a phone number costs your phone provider nothing, they get them for free. Porting numbers has no inherent cost. Even phone calls have almost 0 cost, 15000 minutes for £5, including the line.

 

I don't mind if something's outsourced, as long as it's at a reasonable price. People paying per extension and then buying minutes per extension are being scammed.

[SchoolsBroadband]

I can cast iron guarantee we do not rake in the profits when it comes to hosted VoIP systems!!!!!!

[DGardiner]

Well, based on what I've seen hosted voip people offer, it's usually the network/internet configuration that goes wrong, which is why they want to provide internet and run your router half the time.

 

I'm just pro IT support people, outsourcing means you're not advancing your own career. Now I know all about voip, buying voip services, buying fiber internet, configuring firewalls, configuring phones, so I'm better qualified, and the school has saved money, win win.

 

Hosted voip is a genius business to be in, costs you basically nothing, rake in the profits. You can tell because everyone is doing it.

 

Plus I found out how cheap it should be, so making sure everyone knows to get their prices lowered. Remember: having a phone number costs your phone provider nothing, they get them for free. Porting numbers has no inherent cost. Even phone calls have almost 0 cost, 15000 minutes for £5, including the line.

 

I don't mind if something's outsourced, as long as it's at a reasonable price. People paying per extension and then buying minutes per extension are being scammed.

 

Weve just moved one of our schools from a Mitel onsite system/isdn lines with about 20 handsets to our hosted 3cx, monthly bill went from £130 + ~£50in calls to £16 + Calls(not had an active month to see the changes but our other schools average about £20pm) some people just take schools for a ride

 

Our 3cx licence is for 16sim calls and we top out at about 6-8 calls max at peak times running 6 sites... so we still have plenty space to keep adding more sites as their broadband becomes reliable enough and everyones portion of the hosting gets smaller and smaller were currently at about £2.20 per extension per month

 

Could probably make decent further savings by self hosting in gcp/aws and getting rid of some/all of the support but i like that fallback and they've been really good to work with

[maxrebo]

Were looking in to a new system at the moment.

 

With BT shutting off ISDN\PSTN in February 2025, I'm interested to know what will happen at this point for the businesses\Schools that haven't switched over? Is it actually being switched off then or is it likely to be an extension?

[synaesthesia]

I seriously hope not, this has been on the cards for 10 odd years - anyone that hasn't already made plans is seriously lacking!

[Andycat]

I'd say defo switched off. Virgin have stopped it already (ie we were physically cut off without warning in October!!). Luckily we already had a SiP trunk in.

[maxrebo]

I seriously hope not, this has been on the cards for 10 odd years - anyone that hasn't already made plans is seriously lacking!

I agree, although there will be a lot of schools that have put this off\not planned and then a new network manager comes in, say, January 2025, first job,...."You have a month to get our Phone system upgraded"....

I'm speaking from experience!

Luckily I started in January 2023 and have had time to push SLT to sort this!...

 

Cheers

[synaesthesia]

I feel your pain!

[TechMonkey]

Were looking in to a new system at the moment.

 

With BT shutting off ISDN\PSTN in February 2025, I'm interested to know what will happen at this point for the businesses\Schools that haven't switched over? Is it actually being switched off then or is it likely to be an extension?

 

There are rumours of the deadline being pushed by a short while, due to BT not having had all the bits in place in good time. Though I have seen a sudden push recently by companies to get things sorted. Overall though, we can't rely on that and need to get shifted. I am still finding old lines coming out of the wood work but these are single lines, for alarms or broadband from before we had a decent network. Nothing was properly documented, so I can imagine others are in a similar position.

[gszech]

We are upgrading all our phone systems to UniFi Talk. It's in early access in the UK and you can't port the number yet but this will be sorted soon.

Other than this the system is amazing.

You only pay £7.99 per month for one line and there is no limit on concurrent calls going out from the line.

Also you don't need to pay support as this is UniFi so the system is super easy.

[mavhc]

Not a bad price, but are you locked in to using their phones with that system, or can you use the phones with a different system if you want? Or reuse your current phones with Unifi?

[STK91]

Interesting, didn't realize this was in EA in the UK. Will take a look

[PotNoodleTech]

We are upgrading all our phone systems to UniFi Talk. It's in early access in the UK and you can't port the number yet but this will be sorted soon.

Other than this the system is amazing.

You only pay £7.99 per month for one line and there is no limit on concurrent calls going out from the line.

Also you don't need to pay support as this is UniFi so the system is super easy.

 

Interesting!!

[gszech]

Not a bad price, but are you locked in to using their phones with that system, or can you use the phones with a different system if you want? Or reuse your current phones with Unifi?

 

You are locked with their phones and need to use their Dream Machine. Their phones are next level compared to what other phones we check before ordering them.

The speaker quality is really good especially on the large phone. The screen is responsive, good quality and easy to use. The handset comes with intercom and video call features and if you are using UniFi CCTV you can view their CCTV cams on the phone.

The system is super easy to configure and manage which was the main reason we decided to go with this company - it's very similar to Google Voice but you don't need to buy a licence for all the handsets as they

[gszech]

Interesting, didn't realize this was in EA in the UK. Will take a look

 

It's worth checking. Make sure to buy unlocked phones (you need one phone to start the trial)

With locked phones you need to buy a UniFi number for each handset. With unlock phones you can used them just with extension, but they cost a little bit more (one off cost).

Once the trial is configured UniFi will set you up with 2 trial numbers for a month. As mentioned before porting is coming soon in UK.

[Simcfc73]

Interesting, we are 75% Unifi and might look at moving our FreePBX over to unifi talk.

 

Bit of difference in price on the uk store for the unlocked/locked phones.. £70 vs £190.. do you need the dream machine for the unlocked phones?

[ITGURU]

SIP lines incoming to a Unify Openscape Business S HYPER-V VM server.

Rock solid no issues, with IP phones around the site on separate VLAN.