SIP Provider
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VoicePulse in NYC is pretty awesome. They have a four trunk, $11/mo deal that is really great. I use that for my home line (yes, I have an Asterisk PBX for home use) and a lot of businesses that can work within the four trunk limit use it. They scale up from there but at four trunks they are unbeatable.
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I've heard lots of good things about VoIP.ms but have not used them (yet) myself.
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We have worked with http://www.vitelity.com/ as well as http://www.8x8.com/ for a few of our PBX clients and have had no issues and their support in both cases is great if you have questions.
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Scott, you run Asterisk as a VM, right? What kind of phones do you use? Do you use any wireless/portable phones on this at home?
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@Dashrender We run it hosted. As far as phones, that's the beauty. Use pretty much whatever you want. Only one I know doesn't work is the 3CX softphone and it used to until they locked it down to 3CX systems only.
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Also, wireless/portable? Do you mean cordless handsets or softphones on a smartphone? Either will work.
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I've toyed with the idea of doing what Scott does (use Asterisk at home) as a way to force myself to learn how it work. With that in mind I would require cordless phones at home to work on the system.
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@Dashrender Ah ok. I know cordless VoIP phones exist. More correctly phones with cordless handsets. @networknerd would have a better idea than I but I'm pretty sure Snom has a couple of pretty good ones, from what I've heard. As far as exact models, beats me.
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@Dashrender said:
Scott, you run Asterisk as a VM, right? What kind of phones do you use? Do you use any wireless/portable phones on this at home?
Combination.... Yealink 3 series, Snom 3 series for physical phones. Linphone for softphone.
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@ajstringham said:
@Dashrender We run it hosted. As far as phones, that's the beauty. Use pretty much whatever you want. Only one I know doesn't work is the 3CX softphone and it used to until they locked it down to 3CX systems only.
The issue there is that 3CX isn't an open SIP softphone, it's just a client of 3CX, not an open phone system. It doesn't work with anything except 3CX.
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@Dashrender said:
I've toyed with the idea of doing what Scott does (use Asterisk at home) as a way to force myself to learn how it work. With that in mind I would require cordless phones at home to work on the system.
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2013/08/doing-it-at-home-the-home-pbx/
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@scottalanmiller It used to. But they locked it all down. @networknerd has an older version of the app he never updated and it still works for that reason.
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I actually really like Broadvox (recently acquired by Fusion and named NBS) in addition to the others that were recommended here.
One thing to watch out for is that most providers will charge you based on the number of concurrent calls your organization needs. If 10 people need to be on inbound / outbound calls at once, you will likely pay a set monthly fee for 10 concurrent calls. It depends on the size of your organization. VoicePulse is a good one for home as it is dirt cheap. With Broadvox, I have used their GoLocal! plan where you pay a set fee per concurrent call but get free local calling and then pay a very low monthly fee for LD. The phone bill is literally about $400 or less for 4 companies and 15 concurrent calls. That is amazing compared to what it was when we had PRI.
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Elastix plays really, really well as a VM. I think it likes ESXi best personally, but Scott may disagree.
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@networknerd I have a feeling @scottalanmiller will agree.
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@NetworkNerd said:
I actually really like Broadvox (recently acquired by Fusion and named NBS) in addition to the others that were recommended here.
The phone bill is literally about $400 or less for 4 companies and 15 concurrent calls. That is amazing compared to what it was when we had PRI.
$400 a month for basically 15 lines I guess that's good. I think we pay around $500 for a PRI (23 lines) so $400 doesn't seem like such a deal.
I'll probably get 'modded' for saying this - off topic and all
- but what's killing me is the $850/mth for fiber internet for 6 megs. We moved to fiber 6 years ago for the reliability factor. We used to house our EMR onsite. We needed to make sure we didn't have drops in connection that can commonly happen to cable/DSL provided internet. In 6 years we've had about 10 mins of total unscheduled downtime. Cable on the other hand has had about 50 hours in our area (we know because our satellite office uses said cable internet and in 2012 there were some major issues). -
I agree a deal to some is not so much a deal to others. The beauty with SIP providers is that you can increase / decrease the number of "lines" (or concurrent calls) when needed to save money and only use what you need. Some bundle LD while others do not. Some providers like Intelepeer have plans where you pay per minute whether local or LD, and you get unlimited lines / concurrent calls. Definitely shop around to find a provider that works for you.
Remember you will want 87-100Kbps of upload bandwidth per concurrent call. I can definitely understand having a tough time swallowing ISP pricing, but if it is going to ensure phone clarity,management will pay it.
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@NetworkNerd said:
Remember you will want 87-100Kbps of upload bandwidth per concurrent call. I can definitely understand having a tough time swallowing ISP pricing, but if it is going to ensure phone clarity,management will pay it.
What do you mean? ISP Pricing? If I'm using a SIP provider that is not my ISP, don't I simply have to ensure I leave enough available bandwidth open for incoming calls (not really sure how to do that?), Outgoing is easy to handle through QOS, but incoming? Our 6 meg pipe spends most of the day saturated because of our cloud EMR and VPN tunnels to other branches.
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That's the trick. If you have a high density environment, i'd do either a dedicated network to your VoIP service or get two ISP connections and a load balancer with QoS. Either way, i usually recommend QoS. If your ISP provides your SIP they can provision SIP priority on the delivery side of your pipe.
