Are you ready to ditch the switchboard and move to IP telephony?

When I was growing up it was something of a novelty to have a phone in the house. And when I started working in IT in 1989 my company was still encouraging staff to wait to make calls until after 1pm, when peak time ended. There was something unusual about the new phone system we deployed that year: the Philips Sopho-S was a …

[msknight]

My personal opinion...

Stick with the traditional PBX. Run IP locally if you wish, no problem with that.

You lose your connection to the IP cloud, you lose the lot. The internet is abounding with DDoS and other problems ... but on traditional it's you to the PBX. When you go cloud, you've got ISP's and others in the way.

Wait until there is a more stable internet, with QoS end to end, especially when it comes to the rural areas that aren't properly covered by decent internet connectivity.

I could tell you more .. but I feel a cold hand on my shoulder....

[Richard Jones 1]

Re: My personal opinion...

I tend to agree with you. Power loss is the other elephant in the room, too many IP systems stop the instant power becomes a little bit of an issue. An issue that was cracked years ago for many PSTN and PBX systems. So you might need to check how an IP system exists alongside H&S demands. Not impossible, but check first before a nasty incident, not after!

As for the posting keying delay. More than thirty years ago the PSTN POTS set up I worked on could connect calls, national and international within fractions of a second of the last digit being dialled. Mind you we did make sure that we used the full potential of overlap signalling, not always possible with some countries and their weird variable number lengths and even more weird signalling systems back then.

[Chris Miller]

Re: My personal opinion...

I used to ask clients: "What do you do if you have network problems?"

"Well, first we ring round our list of key contacts to notify ... oh."

[BillDarblay]

Re: My personal opinion...

Is this in Antarctica with no mobile signal?

[Chris Miller]

Re: My personal opinion...

No, it's in England with no mobile signal.

[Lee D]

Re: My personal opinion...

Power loss - stick a UPS on, but otherwise - yes, a problem.

But Internet loss? Anyone with a large enough phone deployment will have a leased line. Chances are that your leased line has greater guarantees than any analogue or ISDN that you can get hold on.

I work in schools - they are, almost without exception, going VoIP internally and moving to SIP for the external calls. You can also include it in disaster recovery plans - school burned to the ground? We can set up a new school inside another site and just get an IP connection and we're back in business on the same phone numbers - taking parents calls and organising whatever is required.

IP phones are so much simpler to manage, deploy, update, expand, etc. that analogue and digital tend not to get a look-in once they're deployed. You can pay some guy to extend some manky old copper out to the new outbuildings, or you can just use the data cable you had to put there anyway. Worst that happens is that you have to VLAN it off and that's a one-off (though I have worked in many schools where voice and data share the switches quite happily, too).

Need more phones? Buy them, slap in the licence (hate it, but that's the cost of those kinds of systems), assign the number, done. Need to change your call carrier? Users don't even notice. Need to move everything off-site? Done. Need to integrate with old lines? No problem. Need users to be able to dial in via softphone? Already in place.

There's not much that old phones have over VoIP, and you can do it completely piecemeal so it's even better. However, I spent a long-time trying to find affordable cordless IP phones that use normal wireless with our manufacturer (Mitel) - they claim to sell them but can't get hold of them for love nor money. At other places I've worked, Cisco wireless phones like that are throughout the site. People forget they rely on the IP network.

If you're going to kit out a fresh building, do one deployment - Cat6. Put your phones on it, even if you have to PoE-inject them individually. Then move to PoE switches. Then put your wireless on PoE. Then put your phones on PoE and even on the wireless too. Then make sure the single system is battery-backed enough for an emergency (which isn't that hard or expensive for the PoE power range for an hour or more). Going to out-last that and need to stay up? Move it off-site without a single customer / member of staff ever knowing.

Sorry, but old-fashioned phones are dead. The only place I see them is the one in the IT Offices "just in case".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: My personal opinion...

Lee D, you might of shot yourself in the foot for giving so much detail (although I appreciate the well thought out process). Seriously, not to be rhetoric, but just look at all the dependencies and variables you just threw into the mix, :-/.

Remember, power isn't free (monetarily or otherwise). Also remember the more you pile on the wagon, the harder the "blow out".

I would like to add that my opinion IS biased. As I slowly start to arrive at a state that I consider my own awareness, I'm starting to feel like more and more of this "computing" thing has replaced superior analog devices that would of lasted a life time and survived a nuclear attack/alien invasion (not being sarcastic). Whatever happened to analog technology and the advancement of it?

[Ole Juul]

Re: My personal opinion...

POTS is indeed known for reliability, but that is by no means universal. I've suffered through the better part or a decade with telco service that would drop out, sometimes for days. And the insult of having them insist on sending out a tech when it's always their own rotten lines, is infuriating. This may not be the norm, but for a couple of years now, I've enjoyed VoIP and its better reliability and voice quality. OK, that's my situation but I'm sure there are others. The telcos are not keen on keeping the same standards they did 25 years ago.

Also, I'm on rural wireless with very low bandwidth. I get very few dropouts, certainly nothing compared to cell phone dysfunction that I hear when people call me on those. I'm sold on VoIP and all the practical functions you can have for free - to say nothing of the pricing. You can chose different providers for outgoing and incoming, even chose routing sometimes. The so called "long distance" concept of billing is a gonner too. One thing though, do get a good provider. Either one of the very expensive big companies (who don't offer much except call quality), or one of the cadillac small companies with dedicated staff who usually offer an amazing array of services for no extra cost. If you are even slightly technically inclined, you can get first class service for between 1 and 2 cents per minute. If you want to do a little more work, CircleNet charges $1.50 per month + .002 per minute in the UK and US, and they're a quality company. There are however, plenty that aren't.

[big_D]

Re: My personal opinion...

If you have a choice that is...

We are currently upgrading and we are going VOIP internally, through ISDN trunking to the outside world. But the new PBX is flexible and will switch over to VOIP trunking.

The problem we have here, in Germany, is that the Telekom is phasing out ISDN. They have already migrated most private households to VOIP, but their VOIP trunking for businesses is not yet ready for the big time. However it will need to be in place soon, as the ISDN equipment providers are cancelling their support contracts as of 2018. That means that they have to get all customers switched over to VOIP before their ISDN network is left hanging in the wind.

They are planning with a 2016 release of VOIP trunking and migrating all businesses by the 2018 deadline.

All of the PBX systems that they currently sell are VOIP trunking capable. But the older systems (like our old HiPath) aren't VOIP capable.

We also looked at a cloud solution, but that was incredibly expensive, compared to upgrading to the new software PBX. The investment for the cloud solution (set-up fee, phones, headsets. switches etc.) worked out to almost the same price as the PBX, yet the monthly running costs were more than twice as high as the local PBX - and would get steadily more expensive as we add new employees.

That is the good thing about the local PBX, you pay a moderate 1 off licence fee for each new employee, which is about 20% higher than the set-up fee for the cloud solution, but the monthly running costs remain the same. For each additional employee on the cloud, you also have an additional 5€ - 18€ a month (depending on capabilities required).

The cloud solution initially looked reasonable 4€ a month per employee, but that was for a pure phone system. Add in softphone (1€ a month per employee), CTI with Outlook integration (2€ a month per employee), Fax (1€ a month per employee), mobile integration (using smartphone to call over landline number - 1€ a month per employee or 50€ per employee one-time fee). Then there were the flatrates for telephony - 9€ per employee per month for European landline flat rate.

The advantage, of course, with the cloud solution is that (depending on bandwidth availability) all employees can make external calls at the same time - but we've never had the situation where all 12 of our channels have been used.

[Joe Harrison]

What about mobile?

I use A&A "SIP2SIM" - you get a rather unusual SIM card for your mobile which connects you *only* to the SIP server of your choice. You are then responsible for any gatewaying out to the actual PSTN. I am merely a satisfied customer etc. etc.

www.aa.net.uk/telecoms-sip2sim.html

[Alister]

Interesting article.

When I was growing up, we didn't have a phone in the house, and it wasn't until I started working for the GPO in 1981 that I persuaded my parents to get one (staff discount)...

Leaping forward to 2005, I was responsible for migrating the company I worked for from a rented PBX solution to a complete VoIP system using Asterix for the PBX and a mix of Cisco and Atcom handsets.

We use a dedicated 2MB leased line just for VoIP, and have had very little trouble with call quality. We originally broke out to the PSTN using a third party provider over the internet, but we now do it through the company the leased line is terminated with, so it's a shorter path, and we have more control over it.

The only thing we have had trouble with, and which hasn't improved much in ten years, is that some of the directors wanted portable handsets.

We started with WiFi SIP Handsets, but they were awful - WiFi and SIP don't seem to play well, and so we moved on to DECT phones, trying those by Siemens, Philips, Polycomm and various other manufacturers. In all cases, the call quality was horrible, and now the directors mostly use their Smartphones anyway.

We still use Asterix, and FreePBX, and it's been pretty bomb-proof all the way through.

[Anonymous Coward]

DECT (on IP networks) has come a long way since then. Yes, it needs careful deployment, but can service virtually any premises. I've seen some pretty impressive installs in my days (and nights) working on them. Current days are even better with the advance of CAT-iq.

[JonW]

Our experience

Used to run 4x analogue lines, but had to move office. New place on a different exchange so would have to change the numbers - disaster. However, simple to port existing numbers to VoIP

Offset the money saved on lines on a biz grade connection (EFM) and gone for hosted VoIP with a load of Yealink handsets (They're cool - can do API stuff with them as well to link with CMS)

+ As many outgoings and incomings as I want, great as we grow

+ Simple, Web panel for call groups, IVR, etc etc

+ Easy to add DDIs for marketeers etc

+ Better Internet for the company as a whole (10Mb up and down, uncontended and unmetered)

+ Great DR as if we lose the office, can carry on from any internet connection.

+ Part timer/home worker carries on as if at her desk

+ No BT involvement, not even their copper

+ Actually, the last deserves many more +++s ++++++++^29

- Lose the 'net, lose everything

- EFM is chuffin pricey, but offset by not having the copper and *is* on a 6hr SLA

- Lost the fax and no easy way to plug the alarm in with an autodialer

- Outgoings are a tad more expensive, but we don't do too much of that

That's about it, tbh. We're a rural biz in a small market town; experience has been uniformly good for the last 3 years+

No advert and no connection, but our provider is Dial9 and they've been brilliant and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.

[AlexCrow]

Re: Our experience

For Fax, if your provider supports T.38 you can have very reliable faxing from Fax machines/MFDs by connecting a suitable ATA, such as a Cisco SPA3102 (which would connect to your hosted provider). It *might* work on a non-T38 capable provider but YMMV according to how much jitter/loss there is on the link.

An ATA could also be provided for your alarm dialer to connect to.

All our MFDs have an SPA3102 connected - but most of the faxing happens to/from the desktop. For that we have a Freeswitch box with T38Modem and Hylafax. Works great and all free software.

[kmac499]

Cisco Anywhere

We've recently switched to Home Office from Standard Office working with the Cisco UMTS PBX box moved to one of the guys houses.

Once configured the fancier desk phones plug into our home Networks, setup their own VPN connection back to the Cisco UMTS Box and Ta Da it works..

It's still at risk from Power outages but it is neat and from the customers point of view no change whatsoever..

[swschrad]

uh, set priority on services on the net?

it's very old hat now to set priority low for IP data, high for IP phone, and top priority for internal network management, you know. then somebody downloading 450 Mb of manuals from a vendor is not going to hammer your conference call with market analysts.

if you're REALLY important, dual-path your IP the right way... separate networks, different physical paths, entrance points on opposite sides of the building, stout battery backups, nothing duplicates anywhere or lies parallel. monstrously expensive. but in cases of life-safety communications, like airplane control, it's routine and has been for decades.

at least it is over here in the US

[the spectacularly refined chap]

Re: uh, set priority on services on the net?

it's very old hat now to set priority low for IP data, high for IP phone, and top priority for internal network management, you know. then somebody downloading 450 Mb of manuals from a vendor is not going to hammer your conference call with market analysts.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. On site you say "This VLAN is high priority" - that's CCNA stuff. Externally use MPLS and designate the appropriate LSPs as priority. In both cases the primary driver for their introduction was mixed data on a unified network.

[Christian Berger]

Actually don't use proprietary phones

Seriously, you'll most likely end up with inferior and more expensive ones than you get on the open market. Instead look at phones which can be provisioned by your IP-PBX. The Starface can provision quite a few different models, for example. You'll get all the features you'd get from a proprietary phone, but you can simply re-flash them to the old firmware.

Other than that, VoIP is ideally done on dedicated lines so your last mile won't clash with your Internet. Ohh and please include some way to sniff the packets between your IP-PBX and the provider. It _really_ helps with debugging, particularly when nothing works at all.

Fax is virtually no problem at all if you have decent analogue adapters, T.38 has little support, but I've recently sent 100 10 page faxes without a single failure.

Modem is a bit of a problem, but it should work for short calls if your line is good. Some SIP Providers support "Clearmode" which allows for transparent 64k ISDN channels. You can run X.75 on those for example. However you need to patch Asterisk-based IP-PBXes unless you run it directly to your ISDN adapter.

[BillDarblay]

Obviously for new builds use VOIP

but don't expect much expertise out there.

I was heavily into voice 2000-2010 but dumped it due to the incredibly shitty wages. Considering how much breadth and detail one needed to keep up with - MGCP then H.323 then SIP. POE, QOS, R&S, Radius blah blah blah. FW guys blaming you for 1 way audio and then you having to reconfigure their stupid ASAs or Junipers. Cretinous clients turning you down for gigs because they used CallManager 4.02 and you last used 4.01 blaha vlah blah. Biggest laugh I got were idiot CIOs signing up for MITEL and suffering death by a thousand license requirements - a couple of raspberry pi's could do the same job free! Whahahahaha! Teeeheee!

IT infrastructure just ate itself and none of these skilled bods will come back. So if you want enterprise IPT - pay tens £k and train your IT monkeys up to do it for their peanuts.

Now I use asterisk for my own purposes but I politely turn down any requests for help with IPT or anything IT related.

[Mike 16]

Not to worry

As geezers who remember voice quality die off, they are replaced by young-uns who have only ever used mobiles and VOIP, so are quite used to dropouts and Dalek-voice. Of course, they have also mostly gotten used to texting rather than talking anyway. Voice communication is a losing battle. Sure, you'll see pockets of resistance, like the codgers who remember real bread and beer, but like i said, time will fix this.

[Anonymous Coward]

A consideration is the cost of change against the perceived benefits and the capital already invested.

The first PABX I was 'responsible' for (as in if there was a problem, I was expected to phone the telecomm engineer) was on the wall when I joined the company and lasted a further 10 years. If a handset broke, I bought a replacement off ebay for £30.

We replaced it with a BT Versatility system which has now been running for best part of five years. Every so often, BT Local Business (ie a franchisee) rings us up to tell us its obsolete (and that ISDN is going the way of the dinosaurs) and they could come out and "discuss my requirements" ie flog me something we don't need and a new set of line contracts.

[Mad Hacker]

All I call about is HD Audio...

I just need everyone to move to HD Voice like the G.722 codec. We have IP phones which compress everything using non-HD codecs, then our conference bridge is external which again compresses everyone using a non-HD codec. By the time I am hearing people from around the world with different accents and sometimes on mobiles with worse call quality/compression I cannot understand half of what is said. I can't believe we still have the same low (or lower) quality phone connections we've had for decades.

[Jaap]

Re: All I call about is HD Audio...

This! Once you've tried HD Voice there's no going back; although you're always forced to since the other end doesn't support it.

[Phil Koenig]

Re: All I call about is HD Audio...

All you have to do is have proper equipment and provider that both support HD (eg G.722) and then it should all be fine.

So this "we still have the same low quality..." complaint in the scenario you described to be poor choice of hardware/provider, no?

[Roland6]

Switchboard and IP Telephony serve different but related functions!

The switchboard serves a very useful purpose: the intelligent filtering and routing of calls through voice interaction! It enables a business to publish a single contact number and have people call in and then be rerouted to a physical extension. Similarly, outbound calls can be redirected to "the switchboard" when they satisfy some filter eg. calling a premium rate number.

It doesn't really matter whether those calls are routed over proven voice protocols or IP protocols (that have only in relatively recent years delivered services over IP that are broadly equivalent to late 1980's telco protocols), a business still has to provide a switchboard function in some form. Also it is probably a given that it will need to be 'proprietary' because you don't really want to worry about whether the PABX is running on Windows 2003 or whatever.

[Alister]

Re: Switchboard and IP Telephony serve different but related functions!

Agreed, But all the most popular VoIP offerings, like the Cisco, 3CX and Asterix, provide functionality to act like your switchboard built in.

Our Asterix has direct dial to internal extensions where required, but we only have a single published contact number, which is answered by an automated voice menu. One extension is designated the "switchboard" which acts as a fall-through so that calls which don't match any of the menu options go there.

Restrictions on outgoing calls are also available, and are granular, so that some extensions can only make local calls, whilst others can call international or premium rate. This is easy to set up, and to administer, through a simple interface. In addition call forwarding, call answering, direct to voicemail etc are all easy to set up.

It's not proprietary, it runs on top of Linux, and it more or less just works. I can't remember the last time I had to fiddle with the configuration.

[plrndl]

Voice Quality

If you use the phone as part of your sales procedure, forget digital, unless you really are from Elbonia.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-02-18

[rhydian]

Cost vs. Reliability

First of all, this is a great piece, discussing VoIP while not treating it as a panacea. We've been looking at SIP trunks etc. for some of our offices, and have a lot of legacy kit.

The main consideration for us is reliability. Many of our sites are in rural areas, where even 4mbit broadband could be considered luxurious. In these kinds of areas, leased lines/EFM are seriously pricey, and for our use an 8 channel ISDN30 does the job well. Yes ISDN is old hat, but its still with us for a reason, it is nigh on impossible to kill it. We have moved to hosted SIP/VoIP in some of our smaller new build offices, but only where FTTC was available. We also stick voice handsets on our ADSL lines for service when the phone system UPS runs out of juice during power cuts. Also, ADSL can suffer from local/exchange congestion (even on 20:1 business packages) while ISDN gives you all the channels you're paying for no questions asked.

That is not to say I'm against VoIP on the internal/site side. Our last new build office phone system was an Avaya IP office with proprietary IP handsets. This was because we needed it in a hurry, and with proprietary systems its a lot easier to get a service contract than to find someone willing to support something more "homebrew", even if it is simpler and more reliable. At our largest site I've been uprading our inter-building links, and while I have put in 20 pair cables for our Proprietary Nortel system, I've also ensured that there are spare fibre cores to cover any eventual upgrade to VoIP.

[Christian Legg]

As with others who have written comments, we're facing the slow but sure phase-out of ISDN services in Australia, leaving us with PSTN (ugh) or IP based connections only.

We moved our call centre from ISDN to IP with one of Australia's biggest Telcos over 4 years ago, and the benefits have been pretty good. We can upsize our inbound pipe, both in terms of SIP connectivity and bandwidth, so that as our call centre grows we don't need to upgrade any of our hardware. And we can do that pretty quickly with a phone call to the Telco.

For additional outbound call capability, we have deployed a GSM mobile phone dialler that works like a SIP trunk on our network and gives us 24 outbound channels that we can use in the event that our fixed SIP trunks are full, or if the Telco's SIP system fails (which it has done, once, for 6 hours, during business hours).

And as we deploy new branches, we just spin up new site definitions in our phone system, plug the new phones in and away they go.

We do retain PSTN lines in each branch though for use by outbound faxes - inbound is handled by fax to email service. The same PSTN line also handles the duress/panic alarms and also sports a POTS analog phone, so if the worst comes to the worst the branch staff can make good old fashioned landline calls.

Besides the power downside (which you can work around with decent UPS or generator sets anyway), there can be some really thorny issues if your upstream Telco isn't across the technology that they have deployed. As an example, we have had codec issues that have resulted in DTMF tones not being recognised when our SIP trunks are provisioned on one brand of hardware at the Telco's central exchange, but the tones work just fine if the trunks are provisioned on another brand of hardware. That's a problem for the Telco now...

So when things go right, they go very very right. But when they go wrong, they go rotten!

It's all about getting the right mix of flexibility, cost-savings, expandability and reliability.