Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
I'm looking for the least intrusive and least expensive way to just bring an improvement to phone system without a whole infrastructure update.
Ah, that's the difference. I'm looking for "the list intrusive and least expensive way to just bring an improvement to the phone system"... I'm not ruling out the simplest and best options. You are ruling out (or casually thinking you want to avoid) the easiest solution if it includes an infrastructure update. But why? If that is the cheapest and easiest option, why not take the path of best business value?
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@jaredbusch said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
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.
ISP isn't THAT bad, they are the only option in town, our one cable provider. We have a 50/5 connection.
What I mean by unreliable are just normal things. Fairly regular outages due to storms, fires, accidents, line upgrades. Plus we've had like 5 router blowouts over the years which leave us offline for a couple hours. We had critters chew through lines once which was a full day outage.
Just knowing the temperament of the owners if some newfangled "internety" phone thing goes down, where the "old stuff" would have still been functioning, my job would probably be on the line. It's barbaric I know. But imagine you are the boss and one Monday morning the internet doesn't work, so you pick up the phone to call your IT guy, but the phones don't work either! I wouldn't want to be anybody in the office at that time.
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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.
$1670/month to host it in fact. I outsource as much as possible.
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@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.
$1670/month to host it in fact. I outsource as much as possible.
Holy cow, how big is that application? Can I put in a competing bid?
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I don't know what the building is like, but assuming that you have Ethernet for desktops and phones go on desks... my proposal would be regular "pass through" phones for the desks, a FreePBX VM and a simple POTS to SIP gateway box that talks to the POTS lines. Cheap, simple, no infrastructure changes except removing the fragile old Avaya box and throwing out the ancient phones. Everyone gets nice modern business phones, everyone gets new features, you keep using the POTS lines, no new wiring is needed and when the twenty first century hits that area, you are ready to leverage it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
e POTS lines. Cheap, simple, no infrastructure changes except removing the fragile old Avaya box and throwing out the ancient
This assumes he has a place to run an onsite VM.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
I'm looking for the least intrusive and least expensive way to just bring an improvement to phone system without a whole infrastructure update.
Ah, that's the difference. I'm looking for "the list intrusive and least expensive way to just bring an improvement to the phone system"... I'm not ruling out the simplest and best options. You are ruling out (or casually thinking you want to avoid) the easiest solution if it includes an infrastructure update. But why? If that is the cheapest and easiest option, why not take the path of best business value?
Ok let me start over here.
All the phones are near computers but offices are wired with single rj-45 and single rj-11. Switch is full, no PoE, no QoS, no vLANs. I can certainly upgrade all this to support a new phone system, it just has to fit in budget too.
If we can get new phones, better service, better controller, and keep our current phone service (for time being only with option of upgrading), for less than around $3000, that's doable, at least worth pitching to boss and landlord.
I want least amount of management needed by myself, it's all about stability and uptime. Ease of use for the people here, who are quite non-technical.
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
All the phones are near computers but offices are wired with single rj-45 and single rj-11. Switch is full, no PoE, no QoS, no vLANs. I can certainly upgrade all this to support a new phone system, it just has to fit in budget too.
Perfect. Exactly as it should be. No need for PoE. Nothing wrong with it but no need for it at all. QoS is not needed on the LAN but, of course, is nice to have. VLANs would be bad, good that those are not there. It's perfect, all ready for modern phones. No changes needed at all.
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
If we can get new phones, better service, better controller, and keep our current phone service (for time being only with option of upgrading), for less than around $3000, that's doable, at least worth pitching to boss and landlord.
Your cost is all in the phones (and the bridge.) A cheap bridge is like $100 maybe? Mabye Jared has bought one recently that he would recommend. It's not a large item. How many POTS lines does it need to handle?
All of the real cost is the desk phones. These range from super cheap (under $40) to around $150 at the top end that you would ever consider. Most people buy somewhere in the middle. Obviously these add up quickly, but they are a one time cost and visibly replace ancient phones on desks.
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How many phones do you have/need?
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@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
If we can get new phones, better service, better controller, and keep our current phone service (for time being only with option of upgrading), for less than around $3000, that's doable, at least worth pitching to boss and landlord.
Your cost is all in the phones (and the bridge.) A cheap bridge is like $100 maybe? Mabye Jared has bought one recently that he would recommend. It's not a large item. How many POTS lines does it need to handle?
All of the real cost is the desk phones. These range from super cheap (under $40) to around $150 at the top end that you would ever consider. Most people buy somewhere in the middle. Obviously these add up quickly, but they are a one time cost and visibly replace ancient phones on desks.
This doesn't count the cost of building the PBX either though.. that would be another expense.
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
I want least amount of management needed by myself, it's all about stability and uptime. Ease of use for the people here, who are quite non-technical.
FreePBX would meet that need, assuming you have a server there already. Just pop it in a VM and set up. You can have this outsourced (I'm doing three right now, Jared does these every day.) Once it is set up, you can manage it yourself or outsource that too (same people do this.) It's a simple VM, very small, very few resources. Yours will be 100% internal so very secure and very simple. Like crazy simple. VM stability is really good. You can take backups, snapshot, reboot, move to another hardware kit, etc.
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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...:
If we can get new phones, better service, better controller, and keep our current phone service (for time being only with option of upgrading), for less than around $3000, that's doable, at least worth pitching to boss and landlord.
Your cost is all in the phones (and the bridge.) A cheap bridge is like $100 maybe? Mabye Jared has bought one recently that he would recommend. It's not a large item. How many POTS lines does it need to handle?
All of the real cost is the desk phones. These range from super cheap (under $40) to around $150 at the top end that you would ever consider. Most people buy somewhere in the middle. Obviously these add up quickly, but they are a one time cost and visibly replace ancient phones on desks.
This doesn't count the cost of building the PBX either though.. that would be another expense.
He can do that himself or pay for it. But it's a "pop in the ISO and step through it" process. Certainly something he can do himself. Especially with no WAN component.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
If we can get new phones, better service, better controller, and keep our current phone service (for time being only with option of upgrading), for less than around $3000, that's doable, at least worth pitching to boss and landlord.
Your cost is all in the phones (and the bridge.) A cheap bridge is like $100 maybe? Mabye Jared has bought one recently that he would recommend. It's not a large item. How many POTS lines does it need to handle?
All of the real cost is the desk phones. These range from super cheap (under $40) to around $150 at the top end that you would ever consider. Most people buy somewhere in the middle. Obviously these add up quickly, but they are a one time cost and visibly replace ancient phones on desks.
We would need 8 phones for people but at least 3 more for around the office. One as a cordless would be good.
Support for 4 lines, though only 2 are main voice lines, another is fax. 2 line phones would be sufficient for most of us I think.
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Another factor, and I'm not making any recommendations here, is that desk phones are great but not ubiquitous. For some users, you might just want a soft phone (software on the desktop.) This can be totally free and saves desk space. I do this myself and lots of people do. I'm not recommending this for everyone. But it is a new option you lacked before and a few rare phone users might want to go this way.
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@scottalanmiller 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...:
If we can get new phones, better service, better controller, and keep our current phone service (for time being only with option of upgrading), for less than around $3000, that's doable, at least worth pitching to boss and landlord.
Your cost is all in the phones (and the bridge.) A cheap bridge is like $100 maybe? Mabye Jared has bought one recently that he would recommend. It's not a large item. How many POTS lines does it need to handle?
All of the real cost is the desk phones. These range from super cheap (under $40) to around $150 at the top end that you would ever consider. Most people buy somewhere in the middle. Obviously these add up quickly, but they are a one time cost and visibly replace ancient phones on desks.
This doesn't count the cost of building the PBX either though.. that would be another expense.
He can do that himself or pay for it. But it's a "pop in the ISO and step through it" process. Certainly something he can do himself. Especially with no WAN component.
For a noob, it's easy to see this take someone 20+ hours to setup when you consider building the extensions, v-mail boxes, IVRs, etc, etc, etc.
This post is more for the OP. Not to scare you off, just something to be aware of.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Another factor, and I'm not making any recommendations here, is that desk phones are great but not ubiquitous. For some users, you might just want a soft phone (software on the desktop.) This can be totally free and saves desk space. I do this myself and lots of people do. I'm not recommending this for everyone. But it is a new option you lacked before and a few rare phone users might want to go this way.
But you should consider an headset for this situation.
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Setup and learning curve are important but not the main issue.
The main issue is just that it runs reliably. We do have a good server running Zen already.
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@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Another factor, and I'm not making any recommendations here, is that desk phones are great but not ubiquitous. For some users, you might just want a soft phone (software on the desktop.) This can be totally free and saves desk space. I do this myself and lots of people do. I'm not recommending this for everyone. But it is a new option you lacked before and a few rare phone users might want to go this way.
But you should consider an headset for this situation.
Yes, definitely get a headset.
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Setup and learning curve are important but not the main issue.
The main issue is just that it runs reliably. We do have a good server running Zen already.
Yup, there you go. Far better than some hardware appliance where you can't take a backup or do anything should something fail. Way more reliability and stability with an enterprise VM than a cheap appliance.
