FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...
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So I got the go ahead to switch our centurylink PRI over to a SIP solution. I had been testing with voip.ms and everything has been really good with their service and that was who I intended to go with. My manager though asked about continuing with Centurylink as the provider so I told him I would get quote expecting it to not be very competitive price wise. To my surprise though the quote is competitive.
To be sure one thing I don't like is that it is not metered in that it is a flat fee for a fixed number of concurrent calls but based on my usage calculations the cost will be in line with what I would have expected on metered service at voip.ms.
One thing that does concern me though is that their doesn't appear to be a lot of information on setting up FreePBX with Centurylink SIP and that which I have found leads me to believe it is not as straightforward as some other providers.
See:
https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FPG/Setup+Centurylink+SIP+IQ+trunks ; and
https://www.savelono.com/linux/how-to-setup-a-centurylink-iq-sip-trunk-for-asterisk.htmlHas anyone successfully used Centurylink IQ SIP service with FreePBX?
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CenturyLink is not someone that I would trust. Being "almost the same price" would be a terrible business reason to go with a poor carrier compared to a good one. Also, have you compared ML pricing from Skyetel which should be a bit less than voip.ms? If price is that much of a concern, that's the more competitive one. voip.ms is great, we use them for our secondary lines and international lines. But just getting the price more in line does nothing to address CenturyLink lock in risks, carrier risks, or support issues. Plus what you have found... documentation is going to be lean for obvious reasons, none of us work with carriers like that, there's no business case for it.
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@BraswellJay said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
To be sure one thing I don't like is that it is not metered in that it is a flat fee for a fixed number of concurrent calls but based on my usage calculations the cost will be in line with what I would have expected on metered service at voip.ms.
How is this different from what you have today other than it's simply cheaper.
Is the number of concurrent calls enough? - to many?
Once nice thing about pure per min charges is they generally allow a near infinite number of concurrent calls (you do have to ask them to open the flood gates though - they are limited to cut down on fraud) - yet you only pay for what you actually use.
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@scottalanmiller said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
CenturyLink is not someone that I would trust. Being "almost the same price" would be a terrible business reason to go with a poor carrier compared to a good one. Also, have you compared ML pricing from Skyetel which should be a bit less than voip.ms? If price is that much of a concern, that's the more competitive one. voip.ms is great, we use them for our secondary lines and international lines. But just getting the price more in line does nothing to address CenturyLink lock in risks, carrier risks, or support issues. Plus what you have found... documentation is going to be lean for obvious reasons, none of us work with carriers like that, there's no business case for it.
These are all very good points many of which I have considered. The one benefit that I can see to using their SIP service is that they are who we have our fiber service with and it would seem that would remove any finger pointing between ISP and SIP provider should we have issues. That being said, I will concede that the testing I have done with voip.ms has been flawless which would indicate that would be a small benefit.
Why do you not trust centurylink? We've not had any issues with them from either phone nor ISP service. Service has been very stable and the few issues we've had over the years have been resolved quickly.
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@Dashrender said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
@BraswellJay said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
To be sure one thing I don't like is that it is not metered in that it is a flat fee for a fixed number of concurrent calls but based on my usage calculations the cost will be in line with what I would have expected on metered service at voip.ms.
How is this different from what you have today other than it's simply cheaper.
It's not different other than price, you're correct.
Is the number of concurrent calls enough? - to many?
I think it is a little high only because under this model I need to plan for max concurrent even though that will not be needed regularly. It seems to me that this model forces at least some oversubscription just to handle the max case. That's my primary reason to not like it.
Once nice thing about pure per min charges is they generally allow a near infinite number of concurrent calls (you do have to ask them to open the flood gates though - they are limited to cut down on fraud) - yet you only pay for what you actually use.
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@BraswellJay said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
The one benefit that I can see to using their SIP service is that they are who we have our fiber service with and it would seem that would remove any finger pointing between ISP and SIP provider should we have issues.
Rule of thumb is that that is the one vendor you rule out and never consider, they are the one vendor that can extort you and has zero incentive to do a good job.
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How will Centurylink's SIP be delivered? is it actually just an IP you point to?
Cox Communication for example is nothing like getting service from VOIP.ms. Cox must deliver service via a cable they run to my location. This is a requirement of theirs. This means I can't effectively use a hosted VPS solution like Vultr with Cox. It also means, even if I did have an onsite PBX, if my building burns down... I can't just spin up another PBX in another location - I'm stuck waiting for Cox to deliver service to whatever new location I get up and running - when they get to it.
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@scottalanmiller said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
@BraswellJay said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
The one benefit that I can see to using their SIP service is that they are who we have our fiber service with and it would seem that would remove any finger pointing between ISP and SIP provider should we have issues.
Rule of thumb is that that is the one vendor you rule out and never consider, they are the one vendor that can extort you and has zero incentive to do a good job.
Scott says this a lot - though I'm not sure what or how they are extorting you - short of you being stuck in a contract... but if they are providing bad service, hopefully you have written in outs for yourself.
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@BraswellJay said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
Why do you not trust centurylink? We've not had any issues with them from either phone nor ISP service. Service has been very stable and the few issues we've had over the years have been resolved quickly.
My own run ins with them have been that they absolutely lack competence. Others have had support and reliability issues with them. Far from the worst, to be sure. They are not WindStream or anything like that. But have never come across professional at all and I would classify them only at the technical level of a small hobby shop. Having spoken to their engineers, I couldn't use them as L0 phone techs. I absolutely could not trust them with my infrastructure.
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@Dashrender said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
@scottalanmiller said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
@BraswellJay said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
The one benefit that I can see to using their SIP service is that they are who we have our fiber service with and it would seem that would remove any finger pointing between ISP and SIP provider should we have issues.
Rule of thumb is that that is the one vendor you rule out and never consider, they are the one vendor that can extort you and has zero incentive to do a good job.
Scott says this a lot - though I'm not sure what or how they are extorting you - short of you being stuck in a contract... but if they are providing bad service, hopefully you have written in outs for yourself.
Because they own your phone number and if they turn you off, you are screwed. If their Internet goes down or sucks, you can't fail over your phones. This is SO common. You are totally trapped, the protections you have everywhere else to "just leave" if a service sucks doesn't exist.
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@Dashrender said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
but if they are providing bad service, hopefully you have written in outs for yourself.
Nope, why would you think that when you know that I constantly point out that you don't?
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Simple scenarios...
Internet Sucks or Fails: Your phones are down. Just gone. What can you do but start a porting process? Nothing. How long does it take? Weeks, months? There is nothing you can do, your phones are just "gone". Doesn't matter why, there is no option to short term protect against ISP failure, and no way to protect against long term vendor extortion. As long as you maintain the bundle, you have a massive business risk that would cripple any CEO with fear of customers believing that the business had failed.
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@scottalanmiller said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
Simple scenarios...
Internet Sucks or Fails: Your phones are down. Just gone. What can you do but start a porting process? Nothing. How long does it take? Weeks, months? There is nothing you can do, your phones are just "gone". Doesn't matter why, there is no option to short term protect against ISP failure, and no way to protect against long term vendor extortion. As long as you maintain the bundle, you have a massive business risk that would cripple any CEO with fear of customers believing that the business had failed.
i know you don't trust CenturyLink, etc - but nothing keeps VOIP.ms from doing the same damned thing.
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@Dashrender said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
How will Centurylink's SIP be delivered? is it actually just an IP you point to?
Yes, it is IP based. We already have fiber service from Centurylink and that would be the interface.
Cox Communication for example is nothing like getting service from VOIP.ms. Cox must deliver service via a cable they run to my location. This is a requirement of theirs. This means I can't effectively use a hosted VPS solution like Vultr with Cox. It also means, even if I did have an onsite PBX, if my building burns down... I can't just spin up another PBX in another location - I'm stuck waiting for Cox to deliver service to whatever new location I get up and running - when they get to it.
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@Dashrender said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
@scottalanmiller said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
Simple scenarios...
Internet Sucks or Fails: Your phones are down. Just gone. What can you do but start a porting process? Nothing. How long does it take? Weeks, months? There is nothing you can do, your phones are just "gone". Doesn't matter why, there is no option to short term protect against ISP failure, and no way to protect against long term vendor extortion. As long as you maintain the bundle, you have a massive business risk that would cripple any CEO with fear of customers believing that the business had failed.
i know you don't trust CenturyLink, etc - but nothing keeps VOIP.ms from doing the same damned thing.
Um, duh, voip.ms doesn't even OFFER the service. It's only one service, not a bundle. Voip.ms doesn't lock you to any ISP, let alone their own. Conceptually doesn't even exist with them, it's not even an optional component.
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If voip.ms tried something similar, first of all they would go out of business and would make no sense as they are not an ISP and have no benefit to this like your ISP does, but also it would be straight up illegal and you'd sue the crap out of them.
With an ISP, you can't prove intent, even though we all know that they bank on it and use it constantly to make you afraid to switch services, and you know that you are agreeing to the risk up front, so you have zero recourse.
So in one case, they have no real ability to do it, and no reason to do it. In the other they have every ability to do it, and every reason to want to.
See how they are as different as can reasonably be?
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It's simple motivation and opportunity. In one case, there is motive and opportunity. In the other, their is neither.
Basic human behaviour is to do things in your own interest (which is completely unlike a conspiracy, which is how marketing people try to sell this.)
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@scottalanmiller said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
Simple scenarios...
Internet Sucks or Fails: Your phones are down. Just gone. What can you do but start a porting process? Nothing. How long does it take? Weeks, months? There is nothing you can do, your phones are just "gone". Doesn't matter why, there is no option to short term protect against ISP failure, and no way to protect against long term vendor extortion. As long as you maintain the bundle, you have a massive business risk that would cripple any CEO with fear of customers believing that the business had failed.
I get what you're saying here but in my experience, limited as it is, I'm more concerned about the stability of the SIP provider than I am about Centurylinks network service. At our locations over the last 12 years that I've been here, we've had DSL, T1s and fiber service from them for our networking needs and have had essentially zero problems and the few we have had have been fixed quickly.
Is there any reason to be concerned about the stability of the SIP providers such as voip.ms, skyetel or others in that space? Are these companies profitable with little chance of disappearing? I know centurylink isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe that's true of the pure SIP providers as well but I don't have a good feel for that. That's another concern I have about moving to them, porting our numbers to a provider such as voip.ms and then having them disappear with no good way for us to get our numbers to another carrier. How much of a risk do you see in that area?
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@BraswellJay said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
Is there any reason to be concerned about the stability of the SIP providers such as voip.ms, skyetel or others in that space?
No, I've never seen any of them have stability issues, can't say the same for any ISP. Outages DO happen, but your ISP is dramatically your risk, not the phone carrier. By orders of magnitude.
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@BraswellJay said in FreePBX with Centurylink IQ SIP ...:
I get what you're saying here but in my experience, limited as it is, I'm more concerned about the stability of the SIP provider than I am about Centurylinks network service. At our locations over the last 12 years that I've been here, we've had DSL, T1s and fiber service from them for our networking needs and have had essentially zero problems and the few we have had have been fixed quickly.
From a technolgy, market pressure, and observational position, that doesn't hold up. ISPs are huge risks, phone carriers are small risks. That you've had good experience isn't really a factor, that's not how you can look at these things. And you have to understnad that ISP risks are not "little blips here and there", they are often "month long outages once every two decades". Twelve years without an issue isn't even an observational window.
