Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...
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Multiple IVR's could be setup in FreePBX (or really any PBX) to do just this. But using the phones, why?
Get new cheap yealinks if you don't want anything fancy.
Under $50 per phone. Yealink SIP T19P-e2
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@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@dustinb3403 said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Requirement: Champagne taste on a beer budget. Unreliable internet access, Avaya RJ-11 phones. Rental building, we can't necessarily redo their entire phone infrastructure in any permanent way.
Actually, it's the opposite. They have beer tastes on a champagne budget. POTS, Avaya... they are flaunting how much money they can throw around while having a crap system with no features. It's likely insane how much money they are burning to show off how much they can burn.
This was definitely the case when they bought the system 20 years ago.. Not sure it applies anymore.
Yep reality has set in, and a new phone system in the six figure range just isn't appealing.
Enterprise phone systems are free today. Can you spend a lot? Of course. Do you need to? Nope, free is fine. And better than where they are.
I was specifically referring to the Crexendos of the world.
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@dustinb3403 said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Multiple IVR's could be setup in FreePBX (or really any PBX) to do just this. But using the phones, why?
Get new cheap yealinks if you don't want anything fancy.
Under $50 per phone. Yealink SIP T19P-e2
Yeah, the alternatives get really cheap, really fast. Compared to crappy old phones, these are still better. And the cost savings over the POTS LD adds up really quickly.
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$34.25 for those phones.
That's insanely cheap for a new phone.
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Of course the assumption that there is CAT 5 or better everywhere is something else some might be making.
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@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Of course the assumption that there is CAT 5 or better everywhere is something else some might be making.
Relatively it's a safe assumption. Where there is a phone, there is a computer.
It could be all wireless I suppose. . .
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@dustinb3403 said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Of course the assumption that there is CAT 5 or better everywhere is something else some might be making.
Relatively it's a safe assumption. Where there is a phone, there is a computer.
It could be all wireless I suppose. . .
I have about 50 phones that don't have computers. We are mostly WiFi here.
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@dustinb3403 said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
$34.25 for those phones.
That's insanely cheap for a new phone.
Damn
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@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@dustinb3403 said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
$34.25 for those phones.
That's insanely cheap for a new phone.
Damn
Right?
If anyone complains about phone prices for their office I wouldn't have anything to offer them. How much more cheap could you get?
That's less than a dinner for 1 at most restaurants.
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Handset costs are not relevant here. His problem is bad internet service.
Bad internet service = no SIP
But as I said, the cost of POTS versus SIP needs calculated. Once you know that, then you can determine how expensive you can afford to go on your internet costs to get good service and still reduce your monthly spend.
Then you can look at handset options and determine a cost for that.
And then you can calculate and RoI for the project.
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
since they are an ecommerce, they do make a lot of outgoing calls to customers long distance.
wait, what? You're eCommerce business and your internet isn't reliable and you don't have a second connection? That doesn't seem to fit.
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@mike-davis said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
since they are an ecommerce, they do make a lot of outgoing calls to customers long distance.
wait, what? You're eCommerce business and your internet isn't reliable and you don't have a second connection? That doesn't seem to fit.
Hopefully they are hosting their site.
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@coliver said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@mike-davis said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
since they are an ecommerce, they do make a lot of outgoing calls to customers long distance.
wait, what? You're eCommerce business and your internet isn't reliable and you don't have a second connection? That doesn't seem to fit.
Hopefully they are hosting their site.
I hope they are not hosting it and pay a provider to do so.
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@jaredbusch said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@coliver said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@mike-davis said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
since they are an ecommerce, they do make a lot of outgoing calls to customers long distance.
wait, what? You're eCommerce business and your internet isn't reliable and you don't have a second connection? That doesn't seem to fit.
Hopefully they are hosting their site.
I hope they are not hosting it and pay a provider to do so.
That's what I meant. Thank you for clarifying.
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I've talked with Avaya. On this particular setup you can only have one greeting per voicemail box. It's just old.
I also talked with a dealer and their suggestion is to go to a VOIP system that basically uses IP phones on the internal network but the controller still functions externally over existing phone lines (since our ISP is spotty, no internet phones)
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
I also talked with a dealer and their suggestion is to go to a VOIP system that basically uses IP phones on the internal network but the controller still functions externally over existing phone lines (since our ISP is spotty, no internet phones)
Why talk to a dealer who is just out to get as much money as possible? How is his recommendation superior to a free, enterprise level option?
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
... the controller still functions externally over existing phone lines (since our ISP is spotty, no internet phones)
There is a standard bridging component for that that is dirt cheap. You don't base PBX decisions around that. I understand why your current ISP doesn't make VoIP on the WAN an option, but that shouldn't influence anything here.
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@scottalanmiller
They know stuff and I don't. -
@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
... the controller still functions externally over existing phone lines (since our ISP is spotty, no internet phones)
There is a standard bridging component for that that is dirt cheap. You don't base PBX decisions around that. I understand why your current ISP doesn't make VoIP on the WAN an option, but that shouldn't influence anything here.
The boss makes the decisions, they don't want internet phones.
Not my ISP that doesn't make VoIP on the WAN an option, that's just what the dealer suggested, there is no need to use ISP for external stuff. -
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@scottalanmiller
They know stuff and I don't.All the more reason not to talk to them - the less you know, the more they are able to take advantage of that. You have good advice here in this thread from people not making money screwing you over. Don't get advice from sales people. Also, by going to an Avaya vendor, it was you that chose the solution, they just told you what you chose. If you don't know enough to define the solution, you can't know enough to choose which vendor to ask for a product.
Make sense? Avaya has one thing for you. Cisco has one thing. FreePBX has one thing. By choosing a salesman for one of them, you've already chosen the solution you will get told about, even if you don't know for sure that that solution is.
