WiFi enabled VOIP Phones for Office?

[RichB]

I have an office with old fashioned BT phones (6 lines) and I am considering swapping to VOIP. The issue is that my building is 350 years old and has no Cat 5 cabling in the rooms. As I rent I do not want the expense of pulling up the floor to install this so I wondered if there is a VOIP system with WiFi handsets? We have a fast enough broadband service so it's just a case of finding handsets that do not need to be hardwired to the internet.

Thoughts anyone?

p.s. didn't know if this should go here or in Computers and It stuff so move it if you think it will get more responses elsewhere. Tnx

[crmcatee]

Why not try a soft phone option ?

You'll need to have your PC/Laptop on to make/receive calls but it'll work on wifi.

[brman]

No experience of wifi but is the building too big for dect? Plenty of them (i use a gigaset)

[chandler99]

Check out Cisco 525G handsets

[Fonzey]

crmcatee said:

Why not try a soft phone option ?

You'll need to have your PC/Laptop on to make/receive calls but it'll work on wifi.

This, something like Skype for Business and you're away. You can even get real looking phones if your users freak out a bit at the concept of a soft phone, but they just use the Skype client which is fine on WiFi.

[andyb28]

Not Wifi as such, but we install these for some of our customers.

Yealink SIP-W52H

Its a walkabout voip phone. So as long as the base station is plugged into a network cable, it could work for you?

[RichB]

Fonzey said:

crmcatee said:

Why not try a soft phone option ? You'll need to have your PC/Laptop on to make/receive calls but it'll work on wifi.

This, something like Skype for Business and you're away. You can even get real looking phones if your users freak out a bit at the concept of a soft phone, but they just use the Skype client which is fine on WiFi.

Obviously have experience of Skype for Business (ex-Lync) for conf calls but if no one is in the office i.e. no PCs online how would an answer service work?

Frankly, we all use our mobiles, the only reason for the land lines is that being a business a landline is needed because customers expect to see one.

[RichB]

brman said:

No experience of wifi but is the building too big for dect? Plenty of them (i use a gigaset)

I don't know what dect is...

[RichB]

chandler99 said:

Check out Cisco 525G handsets

Thanks, looks like they may work, I'll do a bit more research.

[M_Pea]

Grandstream have just realeased a new phone which has Wifi on it. i just ordered a bunch for my developers to integrate with our system. so far they seem alright.

just have to make sure with wifi the the coverage is good, and avoid the amature mistake of putting too many access points in one area, if they overlap coverage area it will impact your coverage.

[yo-gurt]

We've been using a VOIP system provided by a company called 8x8 for a while now. The handsets we have aren't wireless (Polycom VVX), but the soft phone option could work pretty well if you use laptops or the mobile app. Even our main number is set to call a dialling group, so if there's nobody at the desk. as long as somebody is online on their laptop, or their phone is connected to wifi/4g/3g, the calls can be answered.

It's not exactly wifi deskphones, but could do the job?

[RichB]

I may have found the solution, a inbound cloud system. 1 number and it calls our mobiles, you can have the press 1 for sales and 2 for support thing and with a portal you can configure it to do anything. Get rid of the handsets on our desks because we all use our mobiles for outbound calls and it will cost about £5 / mth as opposed for a useless service form BT that's now coasting £300+ mth.

[andyb28]

RichB said:

I may have found the solution, a inbound cloud system. 1 number and it calls our mobiles, you can have the press 1 for sales and 2 for support thing and with a portal you can configure it to do anything. Get rid of the handsets on our desks because we all use our mobiles for outbound calls and it will cost about £5 / mth as opposed for a useless service form BT that's now coasting £300+ mth.

But you could just do that now with a system like 3cx.

I think the original objective was a WIFI enabled VOIP phone.

[RichB]

andyb28 said:

RichB said:

I may have found the solution, a inbound cloud system. 1 number and it calls our mobiles, you can have the press 1 for sales and 2 for support thing and with a portal you can configure it to do anything. Get rid of the handsets on our desks because we all use our mobiles for outbound calls and it will cost about £5 / mth as opposed for a useless service form BT that's now coasting £300+ mth.

But you could just do that now with a system like 3cx. I think the original objective was a WIFI enabled VOIP phone.

Thanks. My objective was to get a better system than my BT landlines and save costs and as I do not want to put Cat5 cabllng in I was first looking at Wifi VOIP.

[Marc p]

RichB said:

andyb28 said:

RichB said:

I may have found the solution, a inbound cloud system. 1 number and it calls our mobiles, you can have the press 1 for sales and 2 for support thing and with a portal you can configure it to do anything. Get rid of the handsets on our desks because we all use our mobiles for outbound calls and it will cost about £5 / mth as opposed for a useless service form BT that's now coasting £300+ mth.

But you could just do that now with a system like 3cx. I think the original objective was a WIFI enabled VOIP phone.

Thanks. My objective was to get a better system than my BT landlines and save costs and as I do not want to put Cat5 cabllng in I was first looking at Wifi VOIP.

Do you use Office 365? I have been dealing with a few of these lately where we are utilising Teams (Skype replacement) for clients, which will ring on phones, laptops, etc and you can use it for outbound as well.

[Fonzey]

RichB said:

bviously have experience of Skype for Business (ex-Lync) for conf calls but if no one is in the office i.e. no PCs online how would an answer service work?

Frankly, we all use our mobiles, the only reason for the land lines is that being a business a landline is needed because customers expect to see one.

Sorry, forgot about this thread.

Out of the box, the Skype (or now Teams) license will allow you to conference or call other Skype for Business accounts 'for free' in the service, but "real phones" cannot dial on or be contacted.

To do that, you add a "phone system" license which allows you to assign a geo-relevant direct dial number to a skype account. Mine for example has a Leeds area code.

You then add on a dial-plan, usually just choosing between Domestic or International.

There is another addon called PSTN Conferencing that will allow your conferences to also have a 'real' number associated with them for mix/matched Skype and Phone conferences. Useful for customer/partner meetings.

At this point, Skype for Business can be used to dial real phones, receive calls from real phones and have mixed conferences. SfB has functionality for hunt groups, auto-attendant and voicemail like most phone systems do.

Your staff can also have the SfB/Teams client on their phone - so they can take calls (to the Landline number) on their mobiles.

There are various ways of obtaining the above, but an Office365 E5 license includes all of the above, plus the rights to use Office, Sharepoint, Exchange Online, etc.