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The following is a compilation of some frequently
asked questions we receive here at whichvoip.com with respect to VoIP for the business.
Click on the question below that you are interested in and you will be
directed to the answer. Alternatively, you can scroll down and peruse
all of the questions and answers in this section at your leisure. If
there is a question that you need answered that doesn’t appear here,
please feel free to contact us via our Ask
the Experts page and we will be pleased to answer your specific
questions.
- What VoIP equipment would I need and would I need space at my office for it?
- Would I need to maintain any VoIP equipment?
- What type of back haul do I need for VoIP - Business DSL/Cable or T1/T3?
- Why wouldn't I use a traditional PBX?
- How long to set up VoIP in my business?
- Will I save money with VoIP in my business?
- How easy would it be to expand the number of VoIP phones and/or additional internet connections?
- How do I manage my VoIP network in terms of adding more VoIP phone extensions?
- What are the 5 most important questions to ask a potential VoIP service provider for my business telephony?
- Currently 15 people in my office with POTS lines. If I move to VoIP how much bandwidth do I need?
- How much does a T1/T3 cost?
- How do we handle inter office extensions when my branch in Seattle needs to talk to branch in San Francisco?
- Can I share my T1 with Voice and Data? Special VoIP equipment needed to do this?
- Does the service provider handle the VoIP network at my office or do I need an administrator?
- Should we buy IP phones and how much are they?
- Do I need 2 CAT5 cables to my workstation from the switch, one to phone and one to my PC?
- Do I need battery backup now for my phone service in case power goes out?
- Can people outside my office still call me direct or do they need to go through an operator?
- Can I simply move my IP phone to another cube and keep same phone number?
- Where can I get a FREE Business VoIP Quote - so glad you asked :-)
What VoIP equipment would I need and would I need space at my office for it?
It all depends on what the requirements are and how many users there are at the office. At a bare minimum, for a medium sized office, a call
management server would be required, along with a voicemail server. In a smaller office, a full service branch router from Cisco could accommodate the entire phone
system and network. This router has an on-board Power over Ethernet switch, a call-processing engine, a PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) connection, an internet connection and potentially
even a WAN connection.
The equipment would be located at the office. Every office has a wiring closet of some sort where the existing telephone system and internet is connected.
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Would I need to maintain any VoIP equipment?
Not necessarily. There are companies which provide hosted IP Telephony solutions. In this scenario, a small
company could lease the router and the switch from the hosting company, and then all its phone calls and internet traffic would be directed to the hosting
provider. The provider would then simply send the leasing company a bill at the end of each month, for any toll charges and for its pre-negotiated internet
access costs. To request a customized quote for hosted IP solutions, submit our
business solutions form below.
As such, the hosting company would maintain the entire network, and such, also look after any adds, moves or changes that are required.
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What type of back haul do I need for VoIP - Business DSL/Cable or T1/T3?
This is again dependant upon the number of users. A typical rule of thumb is to have enough voice channels available for 20% of your users to
make calls at one time. So if you have 100 IP phone users, you would want to have at least 20 voice channels available at any time. In this scenario, a
T1 would be a good candidate, since each T1 has 24 voice channels available.
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Why wouldn't I use a traditional PBX?
You shouldn’t if you ever want to reap the benefits of Toll bypass, having a single converged network, and having access to a large number of productivity
increasing tools, such as video-conferencing, softphones, etc.
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How long to set up VoIP in my business?
Again depends on the particular requirements. A remote office can be set-up in a day. A main site with potentially 300 users, can take a
week or two.
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Will I save money with VoIP in my business?
For a multi-campus corporation, the savings are immense. In addition, a centrally managed system can ease administrative headaches.
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How easy would it be to expand the number of VoIP phones and/or additional internet connections?
Depends on how scalable the initial design is. If design is scalable then it should be a simple matter of purchasing addition
bandwidth from a service provider. If it is not designed to be scalable, then a voice server may need to be added or a router may need to be changed
or added.
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How do I manage my VoIP network in terms of adding more VoIP phone extensions?
This would be done by the telephony administrator and would be a simple matter of configuring the new phones MAC address in the servers GUI (Graphical User Interface). This is a
high level view, but a simple copy of an existing phones configuration and then some minor changes would suffice.
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What are the most important questions to ask a potential VoIP service provider for my business telephony?
You just give the provider your requirements with respect to bandwidth, routing protocols, QoS (Quality of Service) and you are good to go.
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Currently 15 people in my office with POTS lines. If I move to VoIP how much bandwidth do I need?
If a business class solution is being targeted (i.e. highly critical in terms of voice quality), then limit the use of broadband for phone service due to potential QOS issues and make sure you also have connections to the PSTN. To
reduce costs, the 20% rule (see FAQ3) can be followed by perhaps reducing the number of lines to 3 or 4. However when it goes down to such a small number of
users, this rule is unlikely to work for businesses such as sales offices where everyone is making calls in parallel, throughout the day. If enough
bandwidth is purchased then the QOS problems may be mitigated.
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How much does a T1/T3 cost?
T1 is approximately $400 to $600 per month depending on your location and service provider.
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How do we handle inter office extensions when my branch in Seattle needs to talk to branch in San Francisco?
When you install a business class VoIP solution and you purchase the DIDs (Direct Inward Dial) from the phone company, you have the option to use 3, 4 or 5 digit
DIDs. The phone company only passes the DID to your call manager. If the Seattle and San Francisco offices are connected over a leased line WAN (which is almost
always the case), then their phone systems will be integrated. For example the phones in Seattle will actually be registered to the call-manager at the HQ
site in San Francisco. As such all call signaling for the phones in Seattle go through the main call-manager. There are software features available which
run on the Seattle router to provide back-up call-processing if the WAN connection ever fails. Hence there are no issues with 4-digit dialing.
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Can I share my T1 with Voice and Data? Special VoIP equipment needed to do this?
You can share your WAN connection. The WAN connection is typically an MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) leased line, but older technologies such as frame-relay and
ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) are still around today. With MPLS the different traffic types are labeled on the LAN and as such the service provider can then give a guaranteed
delivery latency to prioritized voice traffic.
T1’s to the PSTN can not be shared and are for voice only.
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Does the service provider handle the VoIP network at my office or do I need an administrator?
There are a few options here. The service provider will not manage your VoIP network. You can have a hosted system, employ an outside
consulting company to manage it, or simply hire an internal administrator.
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Should we buy IP phones and how much are they?
Yes, you will need to buy IP Phones for a business class solution. The most popular IPT system available today is the Cisco solution. Cisco
uses a proprietary protocol called SCCP to talk to its IP Phones. So only these phones will work in this system. However, there are alternatives to Cisco and
very soon everyone will be using SIP based IP phones in their business network. Even Cisco is getting away from its proprietary SCCP protocol and offering a
SIP solution. Although the license fees to use 3rd party SIP phones may still direct you towards purchasing a more feature rich, Cisco phone.
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Do I need 2 CAT5 cables to my workstation from the switch, one to phone and one to my PC?
You only need 1 CAT5 cable from the switch. The cable from the switch will plug into the IP phone (which itself is a layer 2 switch) and then your PC will
plug into the phone using CAT5 cable. If the access layer switch is enabled with power over Ethernet, then you will not even require a power supply for your IP phone. As
long as the switch is CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) enabled, it need not be a Cisco switch for a Cisco phone to function. The data and voice traffic is segmented at layer 2 by
creating a different voice and data VLAN on the switch. The IP phone will mark the traffic at a higher precedence or class of service than the data traffic
coming from the PC. Hence both security and traffic prioritization are taken care of by the phone itself.
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Do I need battery backup now for my phone service in case power goes out?
Most business class VoIP deployments, are integrated with switches which have redundant power supplies. These switches are ideally connected
to a UPS. Hence it is unlikely that power will ever be lost to the phones.
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Can people outside my office still call me direct or do they need to go through an operator?
If you have purchased a DID from the phone company, they can call you direct. Otherwise, it needs to be through an operator or auto-attendant.
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Can I simply move my IP phone to another cube and keep same phone number?
Absolutely! It can be another cube in your office, or another cube in a different office across the country. As long as the point at which
the phone is connected to is part of the same network as the call-manager and the MAC of the phone is registered with that call-manager cluster.
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