Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...
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Put together a solid plan showing cost savings switching to VOIP and ditching the POTS lines, and show how quick the ROI is. If you're paying anything close to what we were paying for our POTS lines, your ROI should be less than 1 year with all new hardware. It'll be hard for them to not go with the new system.
EDIT: the reply to Jared was coming in form of elaborating a little on your comment about putting phones in line. If he wasn't aware of that option, you can get phones with a passthrough switch port so you plug your existing ethernet connection to the phone then plug the workstation into the switch port on the phone. No need to rewire anything so long as every user already has a computer...
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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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)
