Cost of installing phone points

[samrr]

I need 10 or so phone points installed to a industrial unit - just had a large company come for a chat about new phone systems too.

Now the company which might have the letters T and B in the name said that it would costs about £1200 to do the sockets however ''don't say nothing but I can get an engineer to do it for about £600''

Now seeing as he just halved the price is £600 a fair price for that sort of job?

Seems a lot still?

Will call for a few private quotes but would be good to get a heads up before hand...

[RVIANT]

Depends on what you mean by points

Do you mean cat 5 or just normal wiring? Happy to help it also depends on time to install some industrial units can be a pain.. contact richardv at speechpath.co.uk

[TwistingMyMelon]

Is the 600 "cash"? Its the kind of job you dont want to cut corners on as its poinless if a few of the points don't work

Its quite easy for a standard sparky to do as well

What phone system? How long are you in the building for?

If it was me I would flood cat 5e/6 the building, but I know how to do it so would be cheap!

[samrr]

Just normal phone sockets to plug in BT27208 phones.

We are having 8 lines. Not sure on the system it cost just under 2k though. We are keeping all our old handsets.

It's not a cash job, the guy said oh don't go through us i'll get the guy to do it privatly and do it for £600.

[Dave_ST220]

Will you have networked PC's? If you will and they are proposing hard wiring telephone points you are wasting time & ££. As above, flood wire the place with CAT5e/CAT6, that way it will be easy to switch points between voice/data.

[mchoody]

Could easily be 2/3 men plus materials so I can see that amount in an industrial unit.

[Mr Overheads]

The £600 is just for the wiring for the site - correct?

If your having 8 lines then is that 8 channels on an ISDN30 or 8 Analogue lines with say Featureline as a "system". Presumably there are install cost for the Analogue/ISDN connections. Typically £100ish for the Analogue's and for ISDN30's as the install costs are higher typically they might be offered 'free' but built into a longer term contract with marginally higher line rental.

[samrr]

Dave_ST220 said:

Will you have networked PC's? If you will and they are proposing hard wiring telephone points you are wasting time & ££. As above, flood wire the place with CAT5e/CAT6, that way it will be easy to switch points between voice/data.

Yes we will have about 7 PC's networked to a server.

So the one cable can be used for the PC's and the phones?

[samrr]

Mr Overheads said:

The £600 is just for the wiring for the site - correct?

If your having 8 lines then is that 8 channels on an ISDN30 or 8 Analogue lines with say Featureline as a "system". Presumably there are install cost for the Analogue/ISDN connections. Typically £100ish for the Analogue's and for ISDN30's as the install costs are higher typically they might be offered 'free' but built into a longer term contract with marginally higher line rental.

It's not the ISDN30 it's the one down I think - ISDN with 7 'trip overs' I think is what it's called. All install is free as we are going on an one plan option with BT.

They are charging for the 'box' (about 2k) and the wiring (£600).

If I can get the PC guy to do the wiring for both that would be great. Will give him a call!

[Dave_ST220]

samrr said:

Dave_ST220 said:

Will you have networked PC's? If you will and they are proposing hard wiring telephone points you are wasting time & ££. As above, flood wire the place with CAT5e/CAT6, that way it will be easy to switch points between voice/data.

Yes we will have about 7 PC's networked to a server.

So the one cable can be used for the PC's and the phones?

OK, work out how many phones/PC's you will have, double this number and that is how many points you ***should*** install. It all wires back to a patch cabinet, for a PC you link a patch lead from the patch panel port to an Ethernet switch, for a phone point you link a patch lead from the panel the phone system is terminated to (the actual PBX may have RJ45 ports on it-need to know what model it is!) and the panel all the outlets are wired to. You use converters at the wall outlet end to convert RJ45 sockets to BT female. The prices you have been quoted are about right IMO. What you really want installing is termed "structured cabling".

[samrr]

Ok that sounds good - get two jobs done at once.

Will get some more quotes.

[Timja]

I think last time i got some CAT5 points installed it cost £40 a socket, but i do all my own cabling now - It's very easy to do if you buy the tools and have the time and inclination.

Depends a bit on what they need to do and how difficult a job it is, e.g. trunking, going through walls etc.

[ATM]

2k for an 8 user phone system sounds expensive.

You can normally achieve this without a system and use hosted VoIP handsets with 'features' enabled including voice mail and call recording etc. Then you can get your work calls at home for no extra cost with another VoIP handset.

[samrr]

Not keen on VOIP - you can tell people that call from them and I think it sounds pretty rubbish IMO

The 2k 'box' can be had cheaper esp online however the phones are the most important part of the business and BT have 24/7 365 days a year call out within 4 hours they rekon! In the past they have been ok... So we thought we would go for it.

Just saved us £600 though on the wiring as the IT guy was going to lay CAT5 anyway!

Thanks PH!

[Dave_ST220]

Your "IT guy" should have been advising you to do this from day 1!

[LivinLaVidaLotus]

samrr said:

Not keen on VOIP - you can tell people that call from them and I think it sounds pretty rubbish IMO

Only if it's done badly you can.

[ATM]

LivinLaVidaLotus said:

samrr said:

Not keen on VOIP - you can tell people that call from them and I think it sounds pretty rubbish IMO

Only if it's done badly you can.

I didnt want to start the quality discussion. People dont seem to understand that over 80% of BT's traffic is VoIP anyway. They hear someone in India on a poor connection and think the technology is rubbish across the board.

[russy01]

If only every Tom dick and Harry understood voip and I could save a lot of money on our phone bills.

[samrr]

I don't understand Voip really - just going on experience I wanted an insight to it and googled a few companies requested a call and they all sounded good however a bit 'distant' to our land lines.

I thought if they can't get it right we would sound crap!

Is there no difference when done correctly?

[ATM]

samrr said:

I don't understand Voip really - just going on experience I wanted an insight to it and googled a few companies requested a call and they all sounded good however a bit 'distant' to our land lines.

I thought if they can't get it right we would sound crap!

Is there no difference when done correctly?

Pretty much all voice calls are compressed nowadays by the likes of BT but you would never know. VoIP is just a method or set of methods used to compress Voice onto an IP circuit or system. It is only as good as the IP circuits or system you have. Have you never used Skype or a webcam [audio only or with video] - this is VoIP obviously.

Think of it like converting an old cassette tape to cd and then sending the cd in an email to your mate.

Now if the person you are calling is VoIP too then you can pretty much get the calls for free. But thats not 100%.