Small office VoIP phone plans

[guest]

Hello. I am setting up an office that will have two businesses, with 4 people in each. We will need approx. 2 phone lines per business. The two phone lines will be shared between all four members of each business; but not shared between businesses. There will be substantial international and US calling by both businesses.
My landlord tells me that we have access to a shared t-1 for $150/month.
Questions: (1) is the shared T1 the best option, since I will be running 8 computers and 4 phones on the the wire. DSL won't suffice, I think?
(2) what is the best approach for providing telephone service?

Jerald

[Calum]

Jerald,

I hope this gives you a little insight as to what you need.

With regards to the fractional TI it really depends on how much bandwidth of the T1 link that the landlord can guarantee you.

The bandwidth requirements for VoIP depend on the codec selected by the VoIP service provider but can be anywhere up to 90 Kbits/s. For 4 phone lines this already utilizes 33% of a full T1 bandwidth (1.544 Mbit/s) before even considering data traffic from the 8 pcs.

This may move you into the realm of a full T1 stream depending on your data requirements, which could be costly. We have found bandwidth.com to offer great services for voice and data requirements at a good rate. Refer to the following URL for more information:
http://www.whichvoip.com/cgi-bin/sea...db=2&t=8&s=195

DSL could also work here as you may get a business DSL a/c cheaper than the T1 cost. This will have less uplink bandwidth but probably not an issue since you only have 4 phone lines. Again depends on uplink data requirements. The downlink should be fine for this since you can get DSL lines at 2-3Mbit/s bandwidth depending on how close you are to the Central Office.

If DSL still does not give you the bandwidth required you could always go the cable route. Cable can often give you a bandwidth of 6Mbit/s. Check out our broadband section at: http://www.whichvoip.com/index_broadband.html

You said you needed to call long distance and international. You can get unlimited long distance plans from Bandwidth.com with cheap international calling for only $29.99 a month per seat. Please refer to the following link for more detailed information on Bandwidth.com:
http://www.whichvoip.com/cgi-bin/sea...db=2&t=8&s=195

There are also other very competitive plans for calling internationally check out the following link: http://www.whichvoip.com/cgi-bin/sea...db=2&t=8&s=195

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Calum
http://www.whichvoip.com