Voip phone system

jamoor · 29 Oct 2017 at 14:20

Has anyone here got experience with these? I am looking to setup a VOIP system at work with incoming ISDN lines.

There are probably around 10 extensions and 4 incoming lines. I have seen the yeastar S20 appliance which seems straightforward to use and potentially reliable.

Any recommendations?

krozor · 29 Oct 2017 at 15:57

Personally i would do the following:

*Scrap the ISDN lines and go with a regular stand alone fibre line or SDSLM (will save you money)
*Read up on 3CX - either host it onsite (buy sips) or with a 3CX hosting provider that does it all (Recommended)
*Once 3CX is up and running maintenance is very straight forward and you have a wealth of options and features

You may need to change all your phones to support 3CX but they do support majority of VOIP handsets now.

Hyburnate · 29 Oct 2017 at 16:09

You can go with an on-site system and buy some cards to utilise the existing ISDN lines however with the ISDN switch off and the high costs per line I’d get them ported to a SIP Provider and go for a hosted system.

jamoor · 29 Oct 2017 at 16:14

krozor said:
Personally i would do the following:

*Scrap the ISDN lines and go with a regular stand alone fibre line or SDSLM (will save you money)
*Read up on 3CX - either host it onsite (buy sips) or with a 3CX hosting provider that does it all (Recommended)
*Once 3CX is up and running maintenance is very straight forward and you have a wealth of options and features

You may need to change all your phones to support 3CX but they do support majority of VOIP handsets now.

I already have a fibre line, however we have experienced downtime with this in the past and our failover is 4mb adsl. We should have fibre dsl broadband as a backup within the next year though.

The only thing about 3cx is the basic version lacks some features (BLFs, call parking) otherwise there will be an ongoing licence fee which I could potentially avoid?

Hyburnate · 29 Oct 2017 at 16:17

If you’re considering onsite, I like Sangoma systems because they’re simple

blueboy2001 · 29 Oct 2017 at 18:31

Forget ISDN - it’s end of life soon.

For 10 extensions I’d go hosted - you pay per handset per month, usually with SIP lines and calls included.

Gamma Horizon or 8x8 are worth a look.

jamoor · 29 Oct 2017 at 18:58

Does anyone have experience with handsets? I've been looking at yeastar but open to ideas.

I'm leaning towards 3cx at the moment.

Hyburnate · 29 Oct 2017 at 19:37

jamoor said:
Does anyone have experience with handsets? I've been looking at yeastar but open to ideas.

I'm leaning towards 3cx at the moment.

Yealink

Armageus · 29 Oct 2017 at 20:55

Polycom sip phones are worth a look as well.
We use them with Swyx and had no issues.

Caged · 30 Oct 2017 at 00:03

It’s just phones, is it really that important what handsets you use and what software it runs on? Find a hosted provider that offers the features you want at an acceptable price, let them deal with it.

edscdk · 30 Oct 2017 at 00:08

You can get a dedicated iP telephony broad band line that my friend in the business assures me is more reliable than normal broadband.. Might be worth looking at.. Hosted I'd say was best

Ish · 30 Oct 2017 at 00:31

We moved from ISDN to 3CX which we host internally. We ported our numbers over and got rid of the ISDN trunks and just use SIP trunks now. It was a big cost saving.

We use Yealink phones.

We previously used to have 2 internet connections (one was Virgin and then a BT Fibre service as a backup) but are now just using 1 wireless leased line.

Jamauk · 31 Oct 2017 at 10:10

Could always use Asterisk/Elastix and port the ISDN to a SIP provider, somewhat excessive but it's what I've done at home using an old HP N36L. I got a cheap TDM410P off eBay with 1xFXO & 3xFXS cards to utilise the old BT POTS line (got the line for FTTC so I may as well use it), and to use a few old phones I had kicking around, along with a Linksys SPA3102 as a failover. I learnt a lot in setting it up using some of the online guides are great and make it quite easy to do. For the phones I mainly use some Gigaset cordless phones through IP DECT and after much reading up and finding XML files managed to connect Cisco phones with SIP firmware installed.

I even recently implemented an IVR, slightly pointless for a home setup but it deals with the scam callers (I was getting at least one a day before), along with answerphone that emails recordings to people, and hold music!

Throrik · 31 Oct 2017 at 19:53

The place I work for is a 3CX Re-seller and we're pretty experienced with it, and it works really well for us.

We use SBC, BLF etc and all works fine and is fairly cheap - plus you can get them to host it for you. I also second the Yealink Phones, super easy to provision and super easy to troubleshoot.

I also have experience with Asterix, FreePBX etc and you have a fairly good system there but a lot more potential to go wrong IMO.

Felix · 8 Nov 2017 at 11:29

For so few extensions and lines go for a hosted solution.

tomcoleman · 8 Nov 2017 at 14:53

either go hosted with Gamma or get a IP Office 500 V2 which supports ISDN and SIP with the correct licences.

Deleted member 77746 · 14 Nov 2017 at 17:52

Polycom SIP. (polycom 331) An old company I worked for I had to implement a new 20 SIP phone configuration. We ended up going with ring central because we also needed the incoming call routing with shared lines and IVR. Loved the features. Not cheap though cos it's per user.

jamoor · 18 Nov 2017 at 22:03

I've gone with yealink t26p phones coupled with hosted 3cx. Just configuring it thus far but I'm impressed with the ease of use, especially provisioning.

pepp77 · 18 Nov 2017 at 22:05

Something like Gamma Horizons is good for a company of that size.