Communications & AV · Service 08 of 11
Telephone / VoIP Systems.
Your phone bill is probably still paying for copper lines that one system installed in 2011 needs, and nothing else does.
Businesses still paying per line, running a PBX nobody wants to touch, or needing staff to take calls somewhere other than the desk they were assigned.
The pitch for VoIP is usually cost, and the saving is real. The reason it is worth doing is flexibility. Calls follow the person rather than the desk. Somebody working from home is on the same extension they had in the office. Adding a person is a configuration change instead of a line order and a two week wait.
The reason VoIP goes wrong is almost never the phone system. It is the network underneath it. Voice is unforgiving about jitter and packet loss in a way that a file download simply is not, which is why calls break up on networks that otherwise seem healthy. It needs its traffic prioritised, switching that supports it, and enough power budget for the handsets.
Which is exactly why it makes sense for the company that built your cabling and your network to install your phones. When a call quality problem turns out to be a switch, there is nobody left to point at.
- We assess the network first. Voice quality is a network problem more often than a phone problem.
- Call flow mapped with you: what rings where, what happens out of hours, where calls go unanswered.
- Handsets, PoE and traffic prioritisation installed and configured together.
- Numbers ported and cutover planned deliberately, so the phones do not stop on a Monday morning.
Questions
Telephone / VoIP Systems, answered honestly.
Will we keep our phone numbers?
Yes. Numbers are ported across and you keep them. Porting is the part of the project with the least flexibility on timing, so we start it early and plan the cutover around the date it actually completes rather than the date we hoped it would.
Our calls break up. Is that VoIP being unreliable?
Almost never. It is nearly always the network underneath: no traffic prioritisation, an overloaded uplink, or a switch that cannot keep up. Voice notices problems nothing else does. The fix lives in the network, which is a large part of why we prefer to look at both together.
Cloud or on-premise?
Cloud suits most businesses now: less hardware, easier remote working, predictable monthly cost. On-premise still makes sense where you have specific integration needs, unusual call volumes, or connectivity you do not fully trust. We will give you the honest trade-off for your situation rather than the one with the better margin.
Related
Often done at the same time.
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