Anyone know anything about VOIP phone systems?

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I'm a one man band IT support firm with plenty of small business customers who are starting to move over to VOIP for phone.

I'm getting issues with the 3rd party providers replacing my data router with their own and taking features away such as VPN access, so want to be able to provide this VOIP service myself.

A friend who works in IT sales has suggested 3CX as a PBX software exchange, Gamma Telecom as a SIP provider and Union Street to handle the billing.

I've started a month trial of cloud hosted 3CX and ordered a couple of Yaelink SIP T22P phones which are 3CX compatible to play around with.

My options seem to be to be to pay Google, OVH or Amazon to cloud host 3CX, go to a cloud hosted 3CX provider or install a free "on premise" version of 3CX. I have a Windows based VPS with Fasthosts but am not sure if this is suitable. It sounds more like you'd need a separate machine at each client with 3CX installed.

Now 3CX appears to be free for up to 8 simultaneous calls and one SIP trunk, so I'm guessing I'l need a seperate host for each client.

My understanding of SIP is not all that. I presume this is the link from the VOIP exchange to the PSTN phone network. Does one SIP trunk only have one number then?

Any info would be greatly received as I'm trying to do this blind.
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[Shinigami]

there are voip providers who you'd require no hardware outside of the handsets to log into it, everything controlled via a web portal.

Setup costs/whitelabling can be fairly high though, however you can make a decent profit on call chargers and can set rate plans per customer
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[owl]

don't know if your clients use 365, but we're testing this at the moment

https://products.office.com/en-gb/skype-for-business/pstn-calling-plans

seems ok
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[colink98]

Mixing different data providers with SIP services can often lead of poor call quality and a game of its everyone else's fault.

it can often lead to the customers getting the royal hump.

if you look at a reseller like Spitfire, they will provide a hosted PBX solution along with an ADSL line just for SIP calls.
This is often a sensible way of maintaining call quality.

im not saying you cant use any old connection with any hosted solution, but managing customer expectations has to be a priority.


My understanding of SIP is not all that. I presume this is the link from the VOIP exchange to the PSTN phone network. Does one SIP trunk only have one number then?

the interface between the old PSTN network and the VOIP network is something the SIP provider does at their back end or most probably goes further up the chain to a large carrier.

the sip truck is your connection to the SIP provider (this can be over anyone's data line or a line also supplied by the SIP provider)
the SIP trunk may have a set number of concurrent calls (SIP Lines) or some providers will give you an unlimited number of concurrent calls.

you can assign a single number or a block of numbers to a SIP trunk.

this is one of them areas were silly mistakes can lead to crap solutions. crap solutions lead to pissed off customers.

gotta be worth looking at a reseller such as Spitfire or Trinity Maxwell. i suspect they will both have a turnkey solution you can either re-brand or just take a comish from.

on a different note...
What area do you cover?
how long have you been your own IT boss ?

its something i always considered but never had to balls to do.
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[SBDJ]

I've got quite a bit of VoIP experience - I used to install and maintain enterprise systems from companies like Nortel/Avaya and Microsoft, and smaller systems like Asterisk.

As you say there are three options:

1. Per site host. Positives include less internet bandwidth required and easy integration with local services. Negatives are obviously extra hardware costs, issues with remote management.

2. Single central host. Positives are easy management and maintenance. Negatives are requirement for bandwidth and QoS both at the customer site and yours. This would be my least preferred option personally.

3. Hosted provider. Positives are they bring experience and existing facilities with nothing for you to really need to do. Negatives could potentially be the cost of such a service and your margin.

Don't underestimate the importance of a phone system to your customers. If you think it's bad when the internet connection goes down watch what happens when the phones do.

With that in mind you need to consider redundancy - if the phone system is important to the business then you will be wanting multiple connections with different providers. If you're hosting yourself then the same at your end.

Another thing to consider will be the LAN. Managed environments (where someone is actually responsible for the infrastructure) can be challenging, but unmanaged ones can be a nightmare. Small hubs or switches under desks etc which can present a serious challenge for voice traffic. Put voice traffic onto a seperate VLAN and apply QoS end o end

Obviously I'm coming at this from a larger perspective than you will be working with but the same principles apply.
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[natefz6]

Oh god, tef style post incoming

I have been doing VoIP since 2001 and have been in the telecoms game since 1999 so know a bit about it. I run a VoIP network which started from 0 and is now terminating over 30 million minutes a month.

I do a lot of work with Union Street as they do billing for many of our clients. While they are very good if you only have a handful of clients or you main revenue is elsewhere they are going to be ££££ for you. An alternative is to look for a SIP provider that runs a dealer model where they collect payment from the end user and you get paid commission on the bill. Another alternative is to look at another lower cost billing provider like Billingbooth (!Disclaimer! My old business partner wrote it after seeing some of the downfalls of other bigger billing solutions)

If I was in the same situation as you now I would be looking at hosted PBX. Its been the buzz word in the industry for about 5 years and its now at the tipping point where we are seeing some of our traditional on premise PBX re sellers now just selling hosted seats.

Advantages to hosted among others include:

1,Portable, you can pick up the handset take it to another internet line and it will work. It means you can have a simple cheap fail over/ DR mechanism by installing softclients on laptops and having a back up DSL

2, Less maintenance, If you are installing 3CX instances for each client you are soon going to have to manage a large estate of servers doing all the patches and upgrades. with hosted as the provider updates their systems you get the benefit without having to have customer downtime and you working through the night.

3, Security, VoIP gets attacked a lot. I have seen resellers get taken for over £100,000 in one weekend...

While on security make sure whoever you choose has a good fraud protection model, find out what your liability could be. Check how often they are rating the CDR's. Some VoIP providers expect you to check your own CDR's and only send them to you daily. say they start at 10pm one night and finish dialling through at 8am netx morning. £0.60 per min to Cuba x 10 hours over your 10 channels is £3,600...

People to look at, all the below are fairly reliable and have been around for a long while. Try to stay away from some people offering something too good to be true. They will have an asterisk box in a data centre with little redundancy or backup.

Daisy telecom
Voiceflex
Gamma
Spitfire
8x8
NTA

3CX is a good solution and they are hovering up many IT support/resellers but I would advise you to look at the hosted route for that too.

Key point is connectivity, if you have a shit line the best you will get out of VoIP going over it is more shit + headaches. Remember if you are putting it on DSL the download speed means fuck all, you need to make sure your upload covers the calls that you need. For rough calculations 1 call = 100k, some codecs could be less but to be honest they will sound shit. FTTC if you can.

[colink98]

stay away from Daisy....
unless you want to fuck off every customer you ever had.

they are a total shower of shit.
____________________
PCX125 (stolen) - CBF600 (current)
Ride it like you stole it.
ride sensible and not like an idiot and you wont get 6 points in one week.

[natefz6]

[Liam_]

I'm in the VoIP game as well, I would not use Daisy. They tend to resell Gamma SIP services and i've heard plenty of negative comments made about them, Support etc etc.

Go direct with Gamma if you are looking for a SIP or even a hosted solution.
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Some top tips there. Thanks all.

I've got a couple of hosted PBX suppliers to look at now. As a shortlist, Gamma and NTA seem to be cropping up the most.
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[owl]

personally I thought the gamma horizon client was an utter piece of shite, but to each their own
____________________
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[UncleFester]

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Well Gamma Horizon has terrible reviews.

I like the 3CX PBX and it looks quite good, but I don't like the disjointed idea of having separate suppliers for PBX, PBX hosting, SIP trunk and billing.

Can anyone recommend a hosted 3CX based platform which is suitable for reselling and can offer the SIP trunk and possibly billing too?

NTA's reseller platform seems suitable, but I can't work out how to do the billing for the end customer. I'll give them a bell tomorrow.

https://hvno.co.uk/
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[natefz6]

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I've had a good chat with NTA in the end and it seems like it will suit my needs.

I can start on the per seat model at around £5 a month for 5000 minutes to 01,02,03 and 07 numbers, then by coughing up £1,000 can white label it and use their billing platform.

They can provide the whole service from broadband to hosted PBX, SIP Trunk and billing.

Once I've got a few customers on the go, I can switch to their concurrent calls model at a minimum of 10 across all clients. The guy I spoke to reckons the normal ratio is around 25:1 for lines in use at any one time.
I suspect a lot depends on the type of customer.

Anyhow, I'm going to have a play with it using a couple of SIP phones I bought and a trial and a geographical number he's organising for me. Once happy with it, I just need a one day course on some of the portal features and I should be ready to offer it to existing customers.
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TZR250 2MA road, TZR250 1KT road, TZR250 2MA race, TDR250, YZF-750R Boost colours.
Jaguar S Type 3.0 V6 Sport R, VW Transporter T5 GP LWB Shuttle 140ps DSG.

[mudcow007]

i built an asterisk box for my current work, 60 seats (users), cti with SQL an all that jazz

fire away any questions you have.

I was with Voiceflex, voicepulse (ported US numbers to them an had another Asterisk box in our US office) an voiptalk/ teleappliant

[Paris2]

Also in the VOIP game, lots of us aren't there
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[P.]

We have VoIP at work and provide to customers... It's excessively cheaper than most external companies. Word is we are expanding availability to non-educational entities...

[Fredrick101]

I think Cisco and Shortel are names you can go with. With these two, you are ensured of a better VoIP phone system and after-sales service.

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FredRick