Thread: Voip Service / Phone

Personally, I think it depends on how many calls you make. If you spend a lot of time on the phone, I think it's worth putting FreeSWITCH or sipXecs on a VPS because then you can take a number of trunks from multiple providers and do least-cost routing. Especially if you make international calls, this can save you a lot of money - I have a client with trunks which terminate to PSTN in the US and Asia, so he only pays for a local call to those places.

I'd probably avoid Asterisk if you're not doing PSTN. It's very resource heavy and it doesn't handle SIP properly. If you're using SIP, the protocol is designed to send the audio peer-to-peer. Asterisk proxies it which wastes bandwidth and adds delay.

If your call volume is low and you don't need the flexibility of a PBX, I'd probably just do as many here have recommended - take a single SIP trunk into a cheap SIP phone and let them handle all the complexities. Gradwell are quite reliable, Magrathea too. AQL are pretty much the only game in town for SMS.

Hope that helps.

Snom phones work well until they get into a pathetic "i want to update my firmware, i didn't finish updating but i need to reboot, i need to update.... " loop. Got a couple of M3's going in the bin here as they are now rendered useless.

Have had a fair bit of success with Hitachi Wifi phones but the chaps in the office don't rate them for mixed results with battery life.

I think we've all decided that DECT is really the way to go, preferably with built in VoIP rather than those horrid horrid (repeat x 50) Sipura pieces of junk.

Just bought a couple of Gradwell | Siemens Gigaset A580 IP DECT Phone for home which didn't break the bank. Seem to work well so far. We've got a number of Seimens DECT ones at work.

Grandstream Phones work well if you want wired handsets, although they can be a bit clunky and certainly don't have the look and feel of the Ciscos (not that I'd buy those just on principle eeuugh).

7940G is our standard phone, I would recommend it, works great with asterisk.

Originally Posted by burble

I think I may have asked this before, but my main concern with moving to Voip is that I'm putting my phone number in the hands of SomeRandomSipGateway.com.

If I get a new number and give it to all my clients, then the provider closes or proves to be wildly unreliable, it seems that I'd have to get a new number with a new provider and give that out to all my clients again - last time I looked into it moving voip numbers between companies was difficult or impossible.

At least with a landline or mobile company they're so big that you know they're not going to shut up overnight and disappear with your number. I guess I worry that most voip providers haven't been around long enough to prove their long-term viability.

Do any of you do anything to mitigate the risk? Ie use a forwarding service from someone? Or is it like buying a domain - pick a company you think is reputable and cross your fingers?

I share your paranoia about getting your number trapped with some fly by night VOIP provider.

I would buy an 0800 or similar from somone large and then point it at your VOIP provider of choice. We have found Opal Telecom reliable for 0800/0870/0845 and it's easy to redirect the calls. (Although a division of Carphone Warehouse, they're very much business orientated and I've always found them responsive). £10+VAT pm min spend per number I think.

I knew it was stupid to say VOIPtalk were good... now they've limited our call channels to 1 (so only one call, incoming or outgoing) and stopped us connecting on our spare account.

Originally Posted by goscombtech

i prefer mine germ free when they're so near my ears... new is the best way, and they're not exactly expensive

Think I've only ever used the handset on my phone the once.

We use Cisco 7960 and 7971 with Plantronics Voice Tube headsets (couple of different models) and they work very well (as long as you don't rely on the endpoint manager with Trixbox, it's junk). Not all that much difference between the 7960 and 7971 day to day, 7971 has a colour touch screen - but to be honest it makes no difference in day to day use (apart from our logo looks much nicer in colour )

We've 14 numbers coming in to our Trixbox via IAX2 from memory. The bulk of them from Gradwell themselves.

which headset model would you recommend Karl (have been looking) and also where did you purchase from?

Plantronics SupraPlus H14 I think are the good ones we've got, the newer ones we picked up with dual earphone I don't like, they're too clumsy and bulky. Think we just got them from a seller on eBay (new).

[edit]I've looked, doesn't look like they make them any more, although this looks like the replacement for them: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Business-Plant...3%3A2|294%3A50

7975G is shiney

that is all

Originally Posted by BoostDrinker

Also 08 numbers are considered to be uncool these days (SayNoTo0870.com)

What about 0800?

How about Gradwell for the VOIP service and a Siemens Gigaset A580 IP DECT Phone to keep it cheap. You could always go for a Siemens Gigaset S685IP which supports both PSTN and VOIP simultaneously.

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