VoIP Call Quality
14 Nov 2008, 3:30 pmWhat consideration do you need to take in to account when rolling out a fully hardware driven VoIP solution.
This solution is not suitable for most businesses due to the costs involved not only in the hardware but also the additional staff you will require to keep the system, up and running. You may choose to outsource the staff member rather than keep them as a full time employee but you will then have lead-times involved in having any hardware faults rectified.
If you do not have a multi-site operation that makes thousands of calls per month in between your own sites or you have a mobile fleet that use PDA mobiles that can run a VoIP soft-phone then this solution is definitely not for you as you will never recoup the cost to set it all up.
The smartest way for most business users to get in to the VoIP market is to buy a managed business grade VoIP service from someone like Arrow Voice & Data who specialise in managing only business clients so they understand your requirement. With Arrow Voice & Datayou will not have to worry about managing your own hardware any more than you currently do (i.e. you look after your own PABX as you always have). Arrow will also give you up-time and voice quality guarantees.
What To Watch Out For If Rolling Out A Fully VoIP Phone System?
If you did decide to go with the full hardware VoIP solution and get rid of your traditional lines you would need to consider some very important points:
1. Ensure you have all the necessary codecs & that your hardware runs on a compatible platform: Codecs are the way the voice calls are compressed to send it through the Internet connection, not all hardware will suit your VoIP supplier so be careful, you can’t afford to make a mistake like this as your phones just wont work.
2. Ensure your Internet connection is a true business grade Internet connection. Arrow Voice & Data supply True Business Grade Internet Connections & Business Grade VoIP. If someone offers a really cheap business Internet connection or there are no up-time guarantees, quality of service (QoS) etc. then is is very likely they are selling you a residential grade service with a business rate plan. The small saving you would make by buying a residential grade or incorrectly badged business Internet service will be the worst money you ever save.
3. Up-time guarantee. This should be 99.5% or higher if you are buying a true business grade service.
4. 4 hour fault restoration. Anything less would most likely mean you are considering a residential grade product badged as a business service.
5. Local Number Portability: many providers will take your number off the traditional phone network and put it on their own VoIP network. This is fine as long as you can take it back if you ever with to change to a different supplier. Many VoIP providers; including ones that position themselves as business grade do not allow you to have your number back if you wish to leave. Arrow Voice & Data will let you take your number back if you choose to leave them.
6. DTMF tone feature: This is imperative to most phone users as DTMF is the button press commands for IVR’s and alike (i.e. press 1 for account or 2 for sales). Many VoIP providers do not offer this.
7. Calling Number Display/Call Diversion: So you can see who is calling you and vice versa. If you run call accounting software or need to see the callers number for any reason this is very important. Many phone system feature depend on caller ID being displayed. Call diversions are also a very important part of any businesses communications needs today so make sure you can divert calls.
8. Quality of Service (QoS): This ensures voice traffic get priority over normal data traffic (i.e. rather than limit the bandwidth used to make a call which would hurt the call quality, it will slow down the Internet instead). Without this when you are on the phone and you download or surf the net you will hear the drop in call quality and possible have to end the call due to the quality degradation. With a fully hardware driven VoIP setup it is the end user (you) who must implement and monitor QoS, your Internet connection supplier will not even talk to you about it.
9. Always have backup/disaster recovery lines in place. All large corporates do this but many small to medium business do not as they are trying to cut their costs. Cutting costs is why they are looking at VoIP; if you can’t afford and save money keeping your VoIP and enough traditional line as a fail safe then you should not be looking at a hardware driven VoIP solution. Disaster recovery is your communications insurance.
If you do not ensure the above points are covered the moment you have most likely bought a residential grade service badged as a business service. Once the Internet connection has a fault occur on it or your hardware fails you will find out just how bad things can get with a fully hardware driven VoIP service.
It’s a bit like trying to have your cake and eat it too, you have saved a lot of money on your calls even getting inter-office calls free, the trade off is that your lifeline is now a single Internet line. If you buy a residential grade connection it would be like buying a mini to tow a 30ft yacht instead of getting a V8 4W drive.
Hardware Driven VoIP & Call Quality Issues
There are call quality issues with any VoIP setup but even more so with the fully hardware driven VoIP option. True business grade managed VoIP services work just as well as the traditional network and they offer similar fault resolutions times to the traditional network (faster in many cases). If you buy a fully hardware driven solution you are basically setting your own little telco network and in doing this you have by-passed any legislation that has been put in place by the Australian Government to ensure phone users aren’t left high and dry when something goes wrong with their service.
If you have what you think is a fault on a fully hardware driven VoIP service you will call your Internet connection supplier. If they can’t find any fault they will tell you it is a hardware issue at your end. You would think this is a good thing but in many cases this is the start of a long and arduous task of pin pointing the problem and it’s a new technology so many people even the professionals/hardware suppliers do not fully understand it, although they will charge you top dollar to sit there fumbling their way through it which means it costs you a small fortune as it takes them so much longer to get to the solution.
If the professional or full time staff member can’t work it out they will tell you it is your Internet connection and you will then get stuck in a loop between your Internet provider & hardware provider/technician who just want to point the finger at each other. Meanwhile you still have no phones and are hemmoraging money every minute the phones are down. So make sure you keep some backup lines.
When people realise they need to keep all the back lines they start to see that VoIP is not necessarily cheaper.
Had you chosen a managed business VoIP, you would simply log a fault and wait for it to be fixed, no extra work for you.
Why put your business and livelihood in this precarious position when there are much safer solutions available. Arrow Voice & Data can help you with true business grade VoIP, internet, mobiles, inbound numbers, traditional landlines, hosting & phones systems.
BS
