Oh, soft phones...
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@scottalanmiller said in Oh, soft phones...:
@BBigford said in Oh, soft phones...:
@scottalanmiller said in Oh, soft phones...:
@Breffni-Potter said in Oh, soft phones...:
Why a soft phone on a desktop? Why not on a smartphone?
why not both?
Any reason to have the app on a cell? I mean your cell is already a phone...
So that you can call direct without having to go through the PSTN. Great for high quality calls, and calls for free from anywhere no matter what. I do that so that I can make US calls for free from any country.
Ah, I forgot to mention... We have 3 split companies operating as separate entities for various services (front end cell company, backend cell company, MPLS and other services to major and minor carriers, we also own the colos and all the fiber), but they are all under the same umbrella. We are the PSTN in this instance as we operate on a regional level for telephone switching.
Edit: I'm digressing though. How is everyone tying in their central directory? Is it something manual during the on-board process that you add them to your directory, LDAP tie-in, etc?
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@BBigford said in Oh, soft phones...:
@scottalanmiller said in Oh, soft phones...:
Using your phone as a cell phone means you hit the outside line for every call instead of using the network.
What about when you have unlimited minutes on every phone within the US? You made a good point when you're international though.
Do you have unlimited bidirectional minutes on your SIP trunks and unlimited lines?
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@scottalanmiller said in Oh, soft phones...:
@BBigford said in Oh, soft phones...:
@scottalanmiller said in Oh, soft phones...:
Using your phone as a cell phone means you hit the outside line for every call instead of using the network.
What about when you have unlimited minutes on every phone within the US? You made a good point when you're international though.
Do you have unlimited bidirectional minutes on your SIP trunks and unlimited lines?
I don't have a good answer to that one... That's getting out of my comfort zone as I don't touch that stuff day to day.
Care to take me to school on that question?
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@BBigford said in Oh, soft phones...:
@scottalanmiller said in Oh, soft phones...:
@BBigford said in Oh, soft phones...:
@scottalanmiller said in Oh, soft phones...:
Using your phone as a cell phone means you hit the outside line for every call instead of using the network.
What about when you have unlimited minutes on every phone within the US? You made a good point when you're international though.
Do you have unlimited bidirectional minutes on your SIP trunks and unlimited lines?
I don't have a good answer to that one... That's getting out of my comfort zone as I don't touch that stuff day to day.
Care to take me to school on that question?
Well, normally you have trunks coming in from somewhere to have a connection to the PSTN and you have to pay for that termination. That's not free, even if you are a phone company (although then it might be basically free.) You have to pay for it in some form. Typically you pay for lines, minutes or both. No matter how you pay for it, it is rare that using it when unneeded does not incur a cost or risk of some sort.
Sometimes incoming is free but outgoing is not, though. So it differs. But if anything is "unlimited" then likely there is a line limit so you use external lines up for internal calls. That can get costly quickly.
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@scottalanmiller said in Oh, soft phones...:
@BBigford said in Oh, soft phones...:
@scottalanmiller said in Oh, soft phones...:
@BBigford said in Oh, soft phones...:
@scottalanmiller said in Oh, soft phones...:
Using your phone as a cell phone means you hit the outside line for every call instead of using the network.
What about when you have unlimited minutes on every phone within the US? You made a good point when you're international though.
Do you have unlimited bidirectional minutes on your SIP trunks and unlimited lines?
I don't have a good answer to that one... That's getting out of my comfort zone as I don't touch that stuff day to day.
Care to take me to school on that question?
Well, normally you have trunks coming in from somewhere to have a connection to the PSTN and you have to pay for that termination. That's not free, even if you are a phone company (although then it might be basically free.) You have to pay for it in some form. Typically you pay for lines, minutes or both. No matter how you pay for it, it is rare that using it when unneeded does not incur a cost or risk of some sort.
Sometimes incoming is free but outgoing is not, though. So it differs. But if anything is "unlimited" then likely there is a line limit so you use external lines up for internal calls. That can get costly quickly.
We don't do anything free, we still have the company pay itself to look good for metrics to the board, works out better in accounting as well I guess. Mostly just metrics.
Per minutes or calls, we're paying for the line only. Now it's really getting confusing because after 10 years we're absorbing the cell company we put up about $20M in cash for. It's simply not viable in the market to compete with smaller companies over about 6 states. AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon are the ones everyone is going with. But we aren't getting out of the game, we just aren't selling service. The Big 3 are still paying a ton of money (pretty much 90% of our worth) to our company for traffic. If you make a call within about 500 miles of here on one of those carriers, it touches our network most of the way.
That side of the network is one thing I would love to learn. I do all of the internal stuff for the company (internal networking & systems), whereas that is all customer facing services.
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This discussion is basically moving toward - why do we still have a PSTN?
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@Dashrender said in Oh, soft phones...:
This discussion is basically moving toward - why do we still have a PSTN?
Probably the same reason some still have POTS lines? Not putting in the time or money to do things a different way. I'm sure there is probably something in the legal area that they have to exist as a public service as well. Much like municipal WiFi, provided by the city, getting a lot of push back from larger ISPs and ending up suing the city or threatening to completely leave (looking at you Comcast, and you TimeWarner).
I read an article a long way back when Google Fiber was still just a rumor, that municipal WiFi was getting pushed, and a larger ISP in the southern California area (where the paper was written about... some small suburb), basically told the city that if they provided free WiFi (which isn't really free cause it would be included with taxes), then the ISP would completely pull out of the city. I would think this is a huge bluff because they're not just going to give up the rest of the city because there is wireless Internet in the downtown area. Nonetheless, they were just being jackasses about it.
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Let them pull out. If there are businesses and residental that need/want more, there will be someone else willing to do it. We need to break these probable illegal monopolistic contracts these vendors have with cities.
Hell the city should be the one who owns the infrastructure, not the companies, but we see the lack of maintaining on both sides of that fence, be it private or gov't run.
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@BBigford said in Oh, soft phones...:
Edit: I'm digressing though. How is everyone tying in their central directory? Is it something manual during the on-board process that you add them to your directory, LDAP tie-in, etc?
No point in duplicating work. Make it easy. we used LDAP search. There is a reason there an IP Phone Field in AD/LDAP. Use that as the primary number then you can set the Phone Number (External DID) and Cell as Alternate numbers in the directory. Everything is automated this way.
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Heck there's still plenty of Telecom companies that only have business because they are exempt from LNP (Local number portability) and can hold customers hostage.
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@Jason said in Oh, soft phones...:
Heck there's still plenty of Telecom companies that only have business because they are exempt from LNP (Local number portability) and can hold customers hostage.
why do those customers feel like they are locked in?
Sadly without a whole sale replacement for the phone that provide unique contact info for each user, we'll never get rid of the POTS system.
While the analog portion may actually die, the general connection ideals won't. -
@Dashrender said in Oh, soft phones...:
why do those customers feel like they are locked in?
Because changing phone numbers can be very bad for a business.. heck, It could shut some down..
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@Jason said in Oh, soft phones...:
@Dashrender said in Oh, soft phones...:
why do those customers feel like they are locked in?
Because changing phone numbers can be very bad for a business.. heck, It could shut some down..
Really? I suppose if a customer gets a disconnected message, they might just assume you are closed and not look to see if they can find another number for you. ug.. again getting screwed by the insert your own term.
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@Dashrender said in Oh, soft phones...:
Really? I suppose if a customer gets a disconnected message, they might just assume you are closed and not look to see if they can find another number for you. ug.. again getting screwed by the insert your own term.
Why would they go look? or why should they have too. If you have a lot of customers getting ride of a number costs you customers..
That's why we have any inactive DiDs translated to Main/Rollover Hunt Group Queues.
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But why should you be allowed to be held captive to a bad vendor?
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@Dashrender said in Oh, soft phones...:
But why should you be allowed to be held captive to a bad vendor?
Because it's a business decision, not an IT one. If a company had this case they would not want to go out and get all new numbers, and even if they did they would not be local numbers since then LEC is locked down. Then you likely will also have issues with 911..
It's not the vendor that is bad, it's just how it works for rural telecoms they are exempt from number portability.
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@Dashrender said in Oh, soft phones...:
@Jason said in Oh, soft phones...:
Heck there's still plenty of Telecom companies that only have business because they are exempt from LNP (Local number portability) and can hold customers hostage.
why do those customers feel like they are locked in?
Sadly without a whole sale replacement for the phone that provide unique contact info for each user, we'll never get rid of the POTS system.
While the analog portion may actually die, the general connection ideals won't.This is why I teach people to never buy DIDs. Once you do, you are trapped. Use as few DIDs as you can. DIDs are a legacy thing from another era.
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@Jason said in Oh, soft phones...:
It's not the vendor that is bad, it's just how it works for rural telecoms they are exempt from number portability.
Well, it requires the law to allow them to be bad and them to agree to be bad. The law doesn't make them a bad vendor, the law just allows a monopoly and leveraging that for extortion and the bad vendor just takes advantage of it.
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Another example of unethical, small local businesses that aren't legally bound to do the common decencies forced on larger companies.
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@Jason said in Oh, soft phones...:
@Dashrender said in Oh, soft phones...:
why do those customers feel like they are locked in?
Because changing phone numbers can be very bad for a business.. heck, It could shut some down..
I would setup two phones. Keep the old number but don't advertise it anymore. Let the people who use it still use it call in, but advertise the new number with customers, the website, Google AdWords, and tell vendors about the update. After a couple solid years of doing that and the old number no longer ringing for an extended period of time, make the switch. If you needed a completely separate system for the old phones for a while, so be it. That's how I'd get away from those hostage takers.
