VoIP - Voice over IP - Many small business owners now ask themselves the question, why VoIP? What can it do for me? Am I being sold it rather than understanding the whole thing and buying into the real benefits?
We visit many small to medium sized businesses (5 to 150 users) and we are constantly amazed about how many business owners tell us that they want an IP system or they want IP or VoIP. Some say, we want the latest technology - we can understand this as todays technology gets overtaken at the most alarming rates and business owners are normally torn between being sensible and keeping up to date. Quite often the customer has been visited by a telephone system salesman or even an IT salesman who is 100 times more interested in the order, his sales figures, and what his sales manager or peers might think about him at the end of the month than the customers best interests.
However, from our point of view, there are several things to consider.
The first thing is that , in terms of critical voice applications (ie telephone systems) the more it has to do with IT or technology, the more support will be required and the more prone it is to technical problems and frailties. This is due to the small business being so reliant on ITand often not spending enough on IT and IT support, sometimes, the fewer critical parts of their business that are connected to the IT systems the better (it all works OK in the Lab or until something goes wrong doesnt it?) Plus, how regularly do businesses have to update parts of their IT systems to keep other parts working? . This is not to say that any telephone system connected using IP is bad - this is not the case as we have proved on many ocassions with our customers. However, the point here is that most businesses do not fully understand their options and if they go the IP route, they are often misguided, misinformed and prone to making an ill-informed decision.
The second thing is this - most businesses already have their office voice and data cabling (Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6) in place. Therefore the argument for having IP phones everywhere so you only need one socket per desk is often ridiculous (unless a customer is moving into large offices and they can save 40% on cabling costs by having 40% less outlets - sockets to you and me). For everyone else, the IP argument could be a complete waste of time and money. which is being fuelled by the media, the marketplace, manufacturers, sales people - this list is endless.
If businesses deploy IP phones in their offices, they need to know the reality - 1. they may need local power supplies for EACH PHONE - dreadful for the environment and their office electricity bill. and potentially a big drain on their office consumer unit - do they have enough mains sockets??? 2. If they dont use local power, they will need POE switches. For those of you not up on this, with normal digital or analogue telephones, they dont need power as a very small amount of power is driven down the wire (cable) to the phone extension from the telephone system. With IP phones, this does not happen. Therefore, a computer hub (actually we call them network LAN switches these days) has to have the ability to drive each port with electricity (Power over Ethernet - POE). This can be expensive to provide these switches and even more so if the business has upgraded to Gb or Gigabit Ethernet (meaning their network runs at 1000Mb rather than just 100Mb) as the business will need to buy switches that satisfy both POE and Gb (expensive stuff) . Note also if they have a busy computer network, there may need to be switch configuration so that certain parameters are put in place (VLan/QoS/CoS/PPP) - note anyone installing separate switches for voice and data due to this has completely misunderstood the message and may as well have installed digital telephones (some people may argue with this point)!!
Anyone needing phones in locations where it is costly (or impossible) to run cables, then IP is an excellent option - ie warehouses, schools, home or remote workers. Furthermore, using VoIP to link offices that are distant to one another is of course a naturally obvious thing to do. Also, there is an argument that having only one network to manage (ie just data, not voice and data) will be cheaper and that any potential links from the telephone system to the computer database (for dialling from PCs and screen popping) may not be required - this remains to be seen in each individual case.
Also, we have not covered VoIP on the lines side - this is another topic all together and we urge our customers and potential customers to take advice before making a decision!! This is covered below.
Many people have heard of and use SKYPE. This is a residential product and not really a communications method for business critical applications. You only have to look in the media to see this – SKYPE PROBLEMS.
Businesses are now being offered VoIP solutions that just will not work properly! These are often delivered on normal broadband connections using the public internet. Even worse, sometimes the VoIP is put over the same broadband that the business uses for internet access and e-mail. This can be a disaster and have disastrous consequences for their business.
Such a solution can work brilliantly but only if it is designed correctly and installed for the right reasons in the right situations. Such a solution will normally only work in the following circumstances where a business:
has a fast internet connection
has a leased line
has a dedicated connection just for VoIP
is close to the BT exchange
is serviced by a BT exchange with an LLU offering (LLU suppliers offer faster connectivity than BT)
is serviced by an exchange offering FTC (fibre to the Cabinet)
has a good wiring infrastructure servicing their building
If a business buys into such a solution because it is cheaper, then they will probably be very disappointed. There is normally a reason one thing is cheaper than another.
