Business Focus: VoIP systems
Dave Mitchell explains what to look out for when choosing a Voice over Internet Protocol system and subjects four contenders to testing
Four of the best VoIP systems for your firm.
If you’ve been paying through the nose for expensive PTSN or ISDN telephone services, a move to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is long overdue. Not only can you make big savings, you can benefit from a more flexible phone system – and present a super-professional profile.
Sooner or later you’ll be moving to VoIP regardless, as BT has announced its intention to switch off its PSTN and ISDN networks by 2025. It may seem a long way off, but in the build-up to the switch, new PSTN and ISDN services will no longer be offered from 2020 – that’s less than three years away.
With the days of the private branch exchange (PBX) numbered, the way forward is digital. And that’s no bad thing: VoIP choices have never been better, with a wide range of products offering sophisticated call-handling features and landline-beating costs.
The biggest question for SMBs is how to host your VoIP services: you can choose to set up on-premises IP PBX, or keep things simple with a subscription to a cloud-based VoIP service. This month, we try out four VoIP solutions to help you move your telephony into the 21st century.
Cloudy VoIP
If you’re a smaller organisation with limited on-site IT expertise, a cloudhosted VoIP solution is the obvious choice. Over time, these services work out more expensive that an on-site IP PBX, but you don’t have to worry about management and maintenance, and it’s an easy way for your staff to stay in touch wherever they are – even if your head office is off the grid.
A cloud service will normally provide all the basics, including all essential SIP trunks, channels and call routing capabilities. Check whether you can assign local phone numbers to your account, to reassure customers that you’re a local business. You may also want to check whether you can have multiple numbers, which your IP PBX can route to different extensions.
There are dozens of providers, but compare pricing schemes as these vary substantially. Before signing up, ask the provider if they can port your current phone numbers over as this will avoid any disruption to customer services. Finally, in today’s market, it’s a good idea to check your upgrade and downgrade options, so you can switch tariffs if your demands change.
DIY VoIP
You can reduce costs with an on-site IP PBX, but it’s important to treat this as a fully documented, fully funded IT project. VoIP technology is stable and well-supported, but it isn’t plug and play. Its features will take a while to get working properly, and if you make a mistake, you risk temporarily losing telephone connectivity – which could be damaging to a small business.
We suggest, therefore, that you host your software IP PBX on servergrade hardware. Dedicate a system to the task, as an IP PBX uses lots of TCP/ UDP ports, and conflicts with other apps on the same host could cause problems tricky to diagnose. Ensure it has a static IP address, rather than a dynamically assigned IP address: if its address changes for any reason, your IP phones and softphones will be unable to connect.
To ensure a smooth transition, implement a test environment for your IP PBX first, so you can safely familiarise yourself with its features. You’ll need to record custom voice messages for your digital switchboard, and we recommend training days to ensure your staff know how to use it.
Can your broadband hack it?
Regardless of whether your IP PBX is cloud-hosted or on-premises, ensure that your internet connection is fast enough for voice calls. Anyone who’s endured a garbled phone call knows how unprofessional it sounds.
As a general rule of thumb, you will want to allow at least 90 to 100 Kbits/sec upstream and downstream per VoIP call. To test the VoIPreadiness of your connection, you can use one of the free online VoIP speed quality tests such as voipreview.org and bullseyetelecom.com.
If your internet link is already being pushed to the limit, upgrade it or consider getting a second line that’s dedicated to VoIP traffic, to ensure that your services won’t be affected by bandwidth-hungry applications. VoIP is sensitive to network conditions, and an overloaded connection will lead to excessive latency (time delay between packets) and jitter (variation in packet delivery speeds).
Remember too that if you want remote users to access your on-site IP PBX, you’ll need to allow external connections to your LAN on certain ports. Ensure you’re using a businessgrade router that can offer this service reliably and securely. You’ll also want to turn off the SIP ALG (application layer gateway) if it has one – which many consumer routers won’t allow.
Channel numbers
Once your IP PBX is in place, connect it to the public telephone network. You can achieve this by signing up with a SIP (session initiation protocol) trunk provider – a SIP trunk being effectively a virtual pipe carrying multiple call lines, or channels. Each channel represents a VoIP connection, so the number of channels you need depends on how many concurrent calls you want to accommodate.
To get an idea of your needs, you can start by checking the number of staff using their phones during busy periods. Remember that callers on hold and queued calls each use a SIP channel too – and remember to count remote and mobile employees using “softphone” apps that run on a computer desktop or a smartphone. If you’re unsure, a good starting point for typical IP phone usage is one SIP channel for every three users.
Let’s get digital
The final requirement is the IP phones and headsets your employees will use. There are plenty to choose from, to suit any budget. We used Yealink T23G desktop models, which are cheap, easy to provision and provide good hands-free operations; vendors such as 3CX offer free softphone apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.
All good IP phones support PoE, giving you the freedom to locate them wherever you want without power socket constraints. For a cluster of desks, a multi-port PoE switch is a practical investment, allowing you to run multiple IP phones (and other PoE devices) from a single power socket.
Although switching to VoIP may seem like a complicated project, the tech is mature and there are benefits to be reaped. Read on to see which VoIP solution suits you – because the question is not whether your business makes the switch, but when.