VoIP Advice

[MorfiusX]

At the company I work for, our contract for our phone service is about to expire. I am considering alternate solutions. I really want to put it an Asterisk VoIP solution. We currently spend ~$200 a month for our phone service. This include three lines and a fax line, which has next to no features.

We rarely have more that two calls come in at a time, and I have only briefly observed all lines in use. We are a small business. I've seen packages for service for around $75-$100 that include up to four incoming calls. If I could save $100 a month, I could easily justify the cost of the new equipment. But, I have read in these forums that VoIP service providers still have problems.

We need a new solution, but the owners are very tight with money. I have to be able to justify the cost of the new equipment. We don't need much. We would only have about eight phones.

So, any suggestions on what I should do or pursue?

 

[dogbyte_13]

dont get Vonage!!! try speakeasy.net

 

[XOR != OR]

If you are thinking of getting VoIP delivered over the internet, I'd recommend against that; Copper is far more reliable.

If you go *, go for the fact that you can do *anything* with it. And I mean anything; The owners want to do something completely different with the phones next week than they had in mind this week, it's possible ( for hte most part ).

 

[moetop]

I have been thinking about this a great deal as well, and agree that you still need copper. While I have not had the experience with vendors concerning multiple VoIP lines I have had a lot of experience with leased Internet connectivity, and know that you can not depend on that service to the levels of a plain old copper line either.

What about a system where you use a combination of services? let's use Morfiesx"s example "We rarely have more that two calls come in at a time, and I have only briefly observed all lines in use." What about a 4 line VoIP with 1 or 2 lines Copper backup? Run the services as cheap as you can get on the 2 copper ports, and then have all calls routed out through the VoIP service.

I have not had the time to configure my asterisk setup this way (working on painting the house so I can sell it), but if you had a failure on the VoIP lines do the VoIP providers provide a way to call forward to the copper lines, and does Asterisk automatically detect failed IAX or SIP trunks and is able to roll over to the copper lines for outgoing?

Has anyone done a ROI / cost analysis on this type of setup?

One time server costs $1000

Monthly
Current cost of service $200
New cost of service (including 2 backup copper lines) $125
Average LD minutes 100
Total minutes 500
Estimated down time of VoIP (minutes (4 hours)) 240
Cost of long distance service through copper (dollars a minute) .25

So the difference between $200 and $125 = $75 Savings (not including down time)

The percent of time you make a LD call is the average LD minutes 100 / total minutes 500 = 20% of total time is in LD.

20% of Estimated down time of VoIP (minutes (4 hours)) 240 = 48 Minutes of down time

48 Minutes of down time times Cost of long distance service through copper (dollars a minute) .25 = $12 copper down time costs

$75 Savings (not including down time) - $12 Copper downtime costs = $63 a month total savings.

One time costs $1000 / month total savings $63 = about 16 months ROI

This is a bit simplistic, but gives you a general idea. Also it depends on my questions above and if Asterisk and the provider can actualy do what you want.