I work at a government facility and there is a group that has a remote administered Avaya system. I would check Avaya out, they have both VoIP and standard analog based systems with many features.

Steve,
Not true about Avaya being for only massive operations. The department I was referring to has ~30-40 users. Yes Avaya does a lot of huge businesses, but they also have products for Small Businesses with less than 250 people. I’m not affiliated with Avaya at all, I just see people with the system and they seem to like it.

I’ve also made the switch to VOIP over the last couple of weeks for my business. I went for sipgate as my provider. I simply bought one of their converter boxes for around £50 which meant I could use my existing phones (I like them!). I then signed up to their 1000 minutes for £6 a month package and I’m all done! Callers haven’t noticed I’ve switched at all, which is great. Now when I move the business into our new premises later this month, I just take my converter box with me and that’s it!

If you want more details, give me a shout.

When you change from dedicated lines to VoIP, it is important to consider how resilient your internet connection is – if this has problems then you won’t have phones either. There are many causes of internet loss – DNS problems, diggers cutting cables under the roads, etc. Consider getting both an ADSL and Cable internet connection, then use a true enterprise level muilt-WAN router like those from Peplink which have a great reputation (I saw that the Peplink 310 was reviewed on this website). When all connections are available, you get faster internet by aggregating the connections, If one fails, the device will route all traffic over the other connection and your calls can continue. You can use Quality of Service settings to give the phone system priority over internet browsing and other traffic.

Players to look at in the SME marketplace include Gradwell and VOIPfone. Haven’t used SIPgate for a while, but they used to have a bad rep for fault recovery (system goes down Friday 5pm, doesn’t get fixed until Monday 9am). But they may have improved since then. I always felt they were better suited to techie home users (people a bit too grown-up for Skype).

If I was in Simon’s position I’d be speaking to Gradwell and VOIPfone.

Oh, and one of the key factors is porting your existing BT or C&W numbers into the new system – not all providers cope well with that, but renumbering is a sure fire way to lose business.

Ah, the wonders of a properly implemented ISDN system, not the BT bastardisation of the standards.

I have ISDN at home – you needed it to get a DSL connection when I moved over here – and at work.

When moving around the office, I can redirect internally, but when I leave the house or I am out of the office, I just call up the redirect function on the telephone base station and enter my mobile number and that’s it. When somebody calls my office or house number, it can either ring there AND my mobile, or just on my mobile.

Getting BT to fix the ISDN to offer its default features would be a good start!

For a small operation it would be sensible to look at the Business options offered by Skype, which seem to me to provide an impressive level of flexibility. We’ve been experimenting with bundled numbers, and they work rather well. You can be running your office from the US and come across – very convincingly – as being based in the UK. What’s more, there’s a huge range of Skype phone options, ranging from 3’s various Skype offerings to more sophisticated systems from Philips etc. Not to mention Skype apps for most mobile platforms. We’re seriously considering Skype for our next big telecoms convergence moment!

Steve, you guessed right. I live in Germany.

I would be careful and reconsider why you really want to do this. The main driver for most people is call costs especially where you have multiple locations. If you are just looking to say a few quid on normal calls it doesn’t usually cost in. Our experience of “cheap” implementations like SIPgate/Skype and off the shelf VoIP handets is not good in terms of call quality and reliability. If you do go down this route consider a dedicated internet connection for VoIP with a router that can separate voice from internet/e-mail traffic.

If you want flexibility look at an FMC solution from the likes of C&W, they stick a Pico Cell in your office and you just use your mobile.

If you want an all singing, all dancing solution check out Mitel. You still need a box your office but they can support SIP and ISDN trunks so you have the best of both worlds and future migration options covered. They also support mobile extention, remote working eg a Mitel Phone at home via your router. If you need it they can do unified messaging and integration with CRM/ERP applications.