BT Versatility and Nortel BCM50 phone systems...

[R.O.S.S.I]

Hi guys, just wondering if I could peck your heads about something.

We've got at one of our sites a BT Versatility setup and we've had a BT sales guy on to basically say we should look at upgrading the system there as the BT Versatility is no longer supported by BT.

Fair enough we thought as it is an old old piece of kit, we'll get the guy in to give us a quote and run over some things.

Basically after a lengthy discussion he wants us to ditch our Nortel BCM50 system which we have at our Head Office (only installed 2 years, paid for outright) and also the Versatility and replace with an Avaya system at both sites.

Now I'm sure the Versatility kit is old and needs replacing, but is the Nortel BCM50 really that out of date? He made it out to be end of line pretty much and would be getting dropped by BT soon.

Obviously this is typical sales man fashion which i'm fully aware he could be talking through his ring so i'm just after some advice from OcUK'ers on if the BCM50 is really that out of date and warrants being ditched only 2 years after being fitted in favour of an Avaya solution.

He also threw some SIP trunking into the mix as we currently need a lot more upload than we currently get through ADSL2 and fibre isnt available, he threw in the option of having an EFM line installed and having the voice services from our head office run through this.

Is this all necessary - the Nortel system works fine and we can probably wait until fibre gets rolled out *hopefully in a few months*. So is this just a case of him trying to upsell the hell out of us?

 

[ruffneck]

I can't help you in regards to the BCM50. However we run an Avaya system and its very reliable. we also have an EFM line as a secondary connection, it pulls around 5mbps.

Providing your QOS is configured well it should be fine

 

[kefkef]

Sounds like usual salesman talk, we've had BT telling us the featurenet system we have is going to be canned for the last 7 years and its still going strong. Looking around, the BCM50 is still supported until 2015 for updates and 2018 for extended support, it has gone end of sale now though (saying that, we're just in the process of upgrading our Cisco call manager from version 4 which is ancient, but it just worked so we never bothered to upgrade until we actually had a reason to)

 

[Hulkster]

I think you need to get the official info from BT in writing really - if your phone system is being pulled from support by BT then naturally there is a risk attached if you keep going.

Keep in mind that Nortel are now bust and were bought by Avaya - hence the Avaya suggested replacement.

How many users do you have accross the two sites, and did they give you rough pricing for the Avaya upgrade? Is it a true IP PBX or a Hybrid solution?

How do you currently connect to your HQ?

There are lots of questions to consider before thinking about what product to replace it with so take the sales talk with a pinch of salt.

 

[Yamahahahahaha]

I think you need to get the official info from BT in writing really - if your phone system is being pulled from support by BT then naturally there is a risk attached if you keep going.

It was pulled a while ago. Quite a lot of these units had the baseboard go pop due to poor power regulation design / dodgy capacitors. The system just sits at 'Initialising...' and never fully boots.
One of our smaller clients still uses this unit and just buys refurbished units at £100 a pop when they inevitably die. It's more economical to have a technician come out and replace the unit vs. any kind of replacement system. Maybe once the replacement units dry up they'll move on.

@Rossi, Ignore nearly everything the sales guy said and stick to your existing plan.

Definitely look into SIP trunks because they are extremely cost effective. The good ITSP (Internet Telephony) companies will give you unlimited connections for under £20 a month as long as your billing is with them. SIP is not like ISDN where you have a maximum number of concurrent calls.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

It was pulled a while ago. Quite a lot of these units had the baseboard go pop due to poor power regulation design / dodgy capacitors. The system just sits at 'Initialising...' and never fully boots.
One of our smaller clients still uses this unit and just buys refurbished units at £100 a pop when they inevitably die. It's more economical to have a technician come out and replace the unit vs. any kind of replacement system. Maybe once the replacement units dry up they'll move on.

@ROSSI, Ignore nearly everything the sales guy said and stick to your existing plan.

Definitely look into SIP trunks because they are extremely cost effective. The good ITSP (Internet Telephony) companies will give you unlimited connections for under £20 a month as long as your billing is with them. SIP is not like ISDN where you have a maximum number of concurrent calls.

Well at the moment weve got ISDN30 and are paying for 10 full lines for our head office which when thinking about it is a bit barmy as there is only ever usually 10-15 people in at any one time, unless its a busy day and we might push 20 but thats very very rare.

I like the idea of the SIP trunking, but the sales chap basically made out like they could only be used with an EFM, now I can understand this from a reliability perspective but would it work just as well with a business ADSL2 connection (or fibre when our exchange hopefully gets done next month)?

What do you actually pay for the SIP trunking, is it just a set fee per month for the service or is there hardware to be fitted on site? Would I just replace all my phones with IP phones? Would it work with the current BCM system we have?

Would it be feasible to use that at our smaller remote site which has the obsolete Versatility system? They only have around 5 phones in the office.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

I phoned up Zen today to ask about their SIP trunking and they can provide it fine but they literally only provide the SIP trunk, they don't provide any of the end hardware etc, and I have absolutely no idea how to get the BCM50 system we have to work on a SIP trunk!

 

[#Chri5#]

SIP can work very nicely but also turn into a Grade A pain in the rear. I've spent countless hours trying to get assorted PBXs (mainly Siemens and NEC models) working through routers and firewalls.

With SIP delivered over ADSL a dodgy line can turn into a real pain. If you've got a problem on your ADSL line and it keeps dropping sync, it's annoying for web / e-mail. However, if it cuts off a phone call every five minutes, you soon get somebody from the top of the food chain wanting to know when it will be fixed.

Whilst you can mix & match providers (ISP, ITSP etc), some will provide an end-to-end solution which includes a managed router so there's one company to ring if things go wrong.

Can't help with specifics on the BCM50 but on the PBXs I've worked with sometimes need a hardware card in the PBX and also soft licenses to enable the number of channels you want (like ISDN 30). In other words, there could be a lot more than just connecting an Ethernet cable to the PBX. You'd need to find a company with BCM skills to help you out here.

Generally the PBX would handle the SIP and you should be able to keep your existing handsets (which I guess are "traditional" TDM). You could go with a pure IP solution but unless you have a pressing reason to replace the phones (and possibly PBX), it's not likely to be cost effective.

There's also an argument that if you can get a good deal with somebody on call costs, you need to have a lot of inter-site call traffic to start paying for new equipment.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

Yeh think we may just stick with ISDN30 for another few years, until the BCM is properly out of date and just stick to an ISDN2 setup at our remote site. Then when the BCM is due to be changed we'll move everything over to SIP.