providers for phone line & internet
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@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
Adding more information here.. Our phone system is NEC SV9100. It is said to be IP-PBX. I may not use the right term and causing confusion. But it is a terminal with Pri cards. Hope that clear the confusionYes, as far as I know, NEC is a legacy only PBX vendor. No one talks about them in terms of modern telephony, only for supporting old stuff.
Modern PBX vendors are typically the Asterisk family (Elastix, FreePBX, PIAF, etc.), 3CX, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, and similar. But if you go with any vendor that has a physical device you are stuck, at least partially, in an old mindset and model.
That place I just interviewed has Mitel, he said they can't get away from them (didn't explain why and I didn't ask).
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Mitel was awful back before when I was just an end user. I hated having to make calls on those. I think they have improved a lot in the IP era, but I've not worked with them even though my Texas house is like three blocks from their offices - I walked past it a lot going to get ice cream or whatever.
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"Can't get away from" it IT code for "I have no idea what it does and I'm too afraid to ask".
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@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
Adding more information here.. Our phone system is NEC SV9100. It is said to be IP-PBX. I may not use the right term and causing confusion. But it is a terminal with Pri cards. Hope that clear the confusionYes, as far as I know, NEC is a legacy only PBX vendor. No one talks about them in terms of modern telephony, only for supporting old stuff.
Modern PBX vendors are typically the Asterisk family (Elastix, FreePBX, PIAF, etc.), 3CX, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, and similar. But if you go with any vendor that has a physical device you are stuck, at least partially, in an old mindset and model.
I really wish we know about the downfall on NEC earlier. The next plan for upgrade is 4 years (we upgrade major appliance every 5 years or if budget allows)
But So far everything is working fine. Nothing bad to talk about.. nothing worth praising either. -
@scottalanmiller
For searching for new phone provider, what should I be on the lookout for?
Internet I guess we might stick with Verizon in month-to-month after contract expired. They seem reliable so far. We have 150/150 Fiber. -
@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
Adding more information here.. Our phone system is NEC SV9100. It is said to be IP-PBX. I may not use the right term and causing confusion. But it is a terminal with Pri cards. Hope that clear the confusionYes, as far as I know, NEC is a legacy only PBX vendor. No one talks about them in terms of modern telephony, only for supporting old stuff.
Modern PBX vendors are typically the Asterisk family (Elastix, FreePBX, PIAF, etc.), 3CX, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, and similar. But if you go with any vendor that has a physical device you are stuck, at least partially, in an old mindset and model.
I really wish we know about the downfall on NEC earlier. The next plan for upgrade is 4 years (we upgrade major appliance every 5 years or if budget allows)
But So far everything is working fine. Nothing bad to talk about.. nothing worth praising either.That makes no sense. Why would there be:
- An appliance at all?
- A time frame for "doing things better"
- ANY reason ever to keep paying insane PRI rates when you could be saving money today?
I don't understand why any cycle like this would exist or how anyone could afford to run that way. This seems absolutely crazy. You have a crappy phone that cost too much and a PBX that likely cost you way too much and delivers too little that you could fix, for free, right this minute. Why avoid fixing it?
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@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
For searching for new phone provider, what should I be on the lookout for?
Internet I guess we might stick with Verizon in month-to-month after contract expired. They seem reliable so far. We have 150/150 Fiber.First thing... never talk to someone who also delivers the phone LINE. The two should be separate.
That's not entirely true, but you need a very strong reason why you would talk to someone like Verizon, AT&T, TWC, etc. Those are ISPs, they don't offer "just phones." They only offer phones as an add on to their ISP services which, the first rule I said was... never do.
You should be looking at pure phone carriers that offer no physical infrastructure like voip.ms, for example. We use VoicePulse here, and they have been decent.
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@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
For searching for new phone provider, what should I be on the lookout for?
Internet I guess we might stick with Verizon in month-to-month after contract expired. They seem reliable so far. We have 150/150 Fiber.How much are you paying for the SIP portion (that's what you are getting, it's physically impossible to have PRI over fiber) of that? How much do you save by removing it? And what services are you getting for that price?
Likely what you are getting is a SIP line with a PRI converter on the end to fool your management into thinking you have an old fashioned 1960s PRIs line so that you can hook it up to your expensive 1990s legacy PBX appliance. This is a common thing to do because managers often demand PRI without understanding it (because no one would want it if they did) and PRI isn't possible with any modern infrastructure and it is completely useless, so they use SIP under the hood and at the last second make a local PRI inside of your facility to trick everyone into thinking that have something worse than they actually do.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
For searching for new phone provider, what should I be on the lookout for?
Internet I guess we might stick with Verizon in month-to-month after contract expired. They seem reliable so far. We have 150/150 Fiber.How much are you paying for the SIP portion (that's what you are getting, it's physically impossible to have PRI over fiber) of that? How much do you save by removing it? And what services are you getting for that price?
Likely what you are getting is a SIP line with a PRI converter on the end to fool your management into thinking you have an old fashioned 1960s PRIs line so that you can hook it up to your expensive 1990s legacy PBX appliance. This is a common thing to do because managers often demand PRI without understanding it (because no one would want it if they did) and PRI isn't possible with any modern infrastructure and it is completely useless, so they use SIP under the hood and at the last second make a local PRI inside of your facility to trick everyone into thinking that have something worse than they actually do.
@scottalanmiller
Are you suggesting we ditch NEC altogether?We had 3COM VCX (OLD!) before. My boss want something in-house. My predecessor was talking to NEC prior to me taking over (he got a position closer to his house). I had 2 months after I joined to make the decision because the 3COM VCX was dying. I could say it was hasty decision with little to no consultant.
How much are you paying for the SIP portion (that's what you are getting, it's physically impossible to have PRI over fiber) of that? How much do you save by removing it? And what services are you getting for that price?
I really have no idea how to answer that. I have too few information on my hand. SIP trunking is internet or IP-based phone line right? Since we already paid for NEC terminal, what should I do?
From my crappy information I understand that the Phone itself use SIP and translate to PRI at the terminal. Is that sound about right? -
@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller
Are you suggesting we ditch NEC altogether?Absolutely! It's worth negative money. It's taking value out of the business, I would assume. I mean an evaluation should be done, there are always unknowns, but 99% of the time that thing has literally zero value and is actively losing you money and putting you at risk without any benefit.
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@LAH3385 said:
Since we already paid for NEC terminal, what should I do?
This is sunk cost fallacy causing an emotional reaction - basically your brain is hoping that you can justify the money already lost on the NEC. But that is bad business thinking.
Whether the NEC was free or cost a billion dollars doesn't matter now. What matters today is that you have an NEC that you own (I assume) outright and you need to make decisions based on that.
The sad part is that the NEC is worth nothing, literally, nothing. It has no value for your business. So keeping it because you "spent money on it" doesn't make sense. It is hurting you today, actively. It's not that it cost too much six years ago, that's a different issue and that would be addressed in a port mortem, but right now we are only looking at making the right decision for the future.
Since the NEC is hurting you, you want to remove it. Think of it like cancer. When the doctor tells you that you have lung cancer you don't say "but I've put so much effort into this lung, let's just keep it", no, you say "cut that thing out and try to save me right now!!!!"
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@LAH3385 said:
From my crappy information I understand that the Phone itself use SIP and translate to PRI at the terminal. Is that sound about right?
That's common. So very likely.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
Since we already paid for NEC terminal, what should I do?
This is sunk cost fallacy causing an emotional reaction - basically your brain is hoping that you can justify the money already lost on the NEC. But that is bad business thinking.
Whether the NEC was free or cost a billion dollars doesn't matter now. What matters today is that you have an NEC that you own (I assume) outright and you need to make decisions based on that.
The sad part is that the NEC is worth nothing, literally, nothing. It has no value for your business. So keeping it because you "spent money on it" doesn't make sense. It is hurting you today, actively. It's not that it cost too much six years ago, that's a different issue and that would be addressed in a port mortem, but right now we are only looking at making the right decision for the future.
Since the NEC is hurting you, you want to remove it. Think of it like cancer. When the doctor tells you that you have lung cancer you don't say "but I've put so much effort into this lung, let's just keep it", no, you say "cut that thing out and try to save me right now!!!!"
This will be a great talk with my boss. Maybe I should start preparing to jump ship in worst case scenario.
We just spent 40K on the whole system. Also, I spoke with VOPS.ms and to go that route means overhaul the whole system. -
@LAH3385 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
Since we already paid for NEC terminal, what should I do?
This is sunk cost fallacy causing an emotional reaction - basically your brain is hoping that you can justify the money already lost on the NEC. But that is bad business thinking.
Whether the NEC was free or cost a billion dollars doesn't matter now. What matters today is that you have an NEC that you own (I assume) outright and you need to make decisions based on that.
The sad part is that the NEC is worth nothing, literally, nothing. It has no value for your business. So keeping it because you "spent money on it" doesn't make sense. It is hurting you today, actively. It's not that it cost too much six years ago, that's a different issue and that would be addressed in a port mortem, but right now we are only looking at making the right decision for the future.
Since the NEC is hurting you, you want to remove it. Think of it like cancer. When the doctor tells you that you have lung cancer you don't say "but I've put so much effort into this lung, let's just keep it", no, you say "cut that thing out and try to save me right now!!!!"
This will be a great talk with my boss. Maybe I should start preparing to jump ship in worst case scenario.
We just spent 40K on the whole system. Also, I spoke with VOPS.ms and to go that route means overhaul the whole system.Good Lord, $40,000?
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@LAH3385 said:
This will be a great talk with my boss. Maybe I should start preparing to jump ship in worst case scenario.
We just spent 40K on the whole system.Just explain sunk cost fallacy to him ahead of time to make sure his head is in the right place.
"Just spent" six years ago, right?
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@LAH3385 said:
Also, I spoke with VOPS.ms and to go that route means overhaul the whole system.
Doesn't make any difference since you would never keep the NEC around for any reason. A complete overhaul is the only logical thing to do. The NEC is only hurting you, you want to throw that out. Whether voip.ms requires it or not doesn't change anything.
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And the overhaul should be now, not later. There is nothing to spend going forward, so no reason to wait around while you keep losing money, start moving to something modern and awesome right away.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@LAH3385 said:
This will be a great talk with my boss. Maybe I should start preparing to jump ship in worst case scenario.
We just spent 40K on the whole system.Just explain sunk cost fallacy to him ahead of time to make sure his head is in the right place.
"Just spent" six years ago, right?
No. That last last year.
We moved to our new office back in the end of 2010. That is when we got into Logix and 3COM phone system. However, before Logix contract is over our 3COM system was dying. So we have to switch over to different system which also accommodate Logix PRI. The decision for new phone system was made in around mid of last year. So we had the phone system for less than a year per se.
Even if it is sunk cost we just do not have the resource to overhaul right away.It os a mistake that must be fix. But doing so I might prepare my resume and ready to move on at the same time.
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@LAH3385 said:
Even if it is sunk cost we just do not have the resource to overhaul right away.
But an overhaul would likely be free, right? Why are you assuming that there would be a cost other than the savings potential from not paying for the NEC support?
