Anyone changed from BT to VOIP system?

[Jer_1974]

Looking changing from BT to a Horizon VOIP system. Anyone done it and have any advice? I have two sites and receive a lot of calls. Price is similar but I'm more interested in the features it offers.

[anonymous-user]

I've no doubt you will get a lot of positive comments on VOIP, and no doubt this will eventually be the future, but in my experience I found it to be too inconsistent currently to be a main business phone system.

(Unless you have a lease line which solves many of the issues).

I prefer the older technology of ISND2 which can be controlled with a software based PBX like 3CX. It will give similar flexibility and control to a full VOIP system.

With my particular system, the main phones lines are ISDN2 but I do use some VOIP lines, all managed on the same PBX, as occasional 'overflow'.

[DSLiverpool]

Jer_1974 said:

Looking changing from BT to a Horizon VOIP system. Anyone done it and have any advice? I have two sites and receive a lot of calls. Price is similar but I'm more interested in the features it offers.

Get a hybrid system voip and analogue unless you are very very sure you have solid data rates.

[akirk]

We ran VOIP very happily for a number of years, as long as you can ring-fence a solid 100k up per line then it works well

[skeggysteve]

We had a VOIP system installed last year and it works perfectly, the company upgraded us to fibre FOC and for the few problems we've had the customer service has been excellent.

http://www.soscandocommunications.co.uk/

Speak to John Knox and tell him Steve from Driffield sent you - no I won't get a kick back - but it might make John smile!

[anonymous-user]

We have a BT business line / broadband 39.9 down / 9.75 up and make all our calls through voipfone

No complaints and a massive saving over using BT for calls

[arguti]

So we currently use ISDN for 2 incoming telephone lines and an ancient Panasonic telephone system which allows us 7 extension.

We have separate BT Fibre broadband which is fast and stable.

We do a lot of overseas calls, mainly Africa (South Africa and Nigeria) and Europe at present so looking for something reliable, simple and hopefully cheaper than BT - ideally would like to add call recording and some home working options but nothing more than that at present.

Any recommendations re providers and services - needs to be robust and we are not particularity IT savvy so don't want DIY

[akirk]

we are now full time on VOIP using voipfone...
very easy / non-technical to set up - but equally they will support you...
we run 3 extensions across three virtual offices

[Ean218]

arguti said:

Any recommendations re providers and services - needs to be robust and we are not particularity IT savvy so don't want DIY

That's a shame because even some of the ancient Panasonic PBXs are hybrid, just bung a SIP card in and off you go. Our PBX is over 15 years old but we did just that last year, cost about £80 for a second hand card.

[Tyre Smoke]

I run my taxi office off a 100GB EE sim in a router and four voip phones and two desktop PCs. No issues at all and far, far cheaper than using a landline. Plus the broadband is significantly faster (we are in the sticks) with no after school/school holiday slowdown.

[Big E 118]

We have a BT Broadband and VOIP phones package, 70MB download and 20MB upload, 6-8 people on the phones a lot and never had an issue with it, works well and saved a few hundred pounds a quarter on calls.

My IT guy (self employed chap that looks after a lot of local companies) advised me to use the same broadband and Voip provider as you have one point of contact if a problem occurs, saves time where each party blames the other and nothing is being fixed.

Oh, and my wife has the same set up for her company and has had no issues either. Same number of people but I think her broadband connection is slower.

[NorthDave]

We use VOIPfone too and have done for at least 4 or 5 years. It isn't a particularly complicated setup - maxing at about 4 extensions over 4 sites and 2 countries. It just works, it is cheap and the support seems to be good too.