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VoIP Systems - What you need to know
By: ElectSys
A Respond Buyer's Club Member
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Is VOIP for you?
Voice over internet protocol is increasing in popularity and awareness. Many businesses today wonder if and when they should implement it. In this article we will attempt to give some pointers to help you decide if VOIP is for you. We will first look at the pros of VOIP that make it increasingly popular, and then look at the cons.
The first advantage that comes to mind is the fact that VOIP is a packet switched technology as apposed to circuit switched. Packet switching means that a voice path can be established without having a dedicated circuit or pair of wires for it.
This allows voice to be implemented on non dedicated circuits like the internet. It also means that the destination of your voice is only restricted to where the internet can go because your voice packet is a routable packet. In other words, you can have your business phone at home or take it to a hotel and either way your phone can find your office phone system and youre in business!
Yet another advantage of packet switching is that since voice becomes a data application, data applications can easily be included on a VOIP phone. An example of this would be adding video conferencing to a VOIP phone.
Another pro for VOIP is toll bypass. If you have multiple locations then VOIP is a good option because it allows you to make free calls between sites. It also allows for calls to be sent out from the site where it is the cheapest. If you are located in an ILEC territory where you only have one phone company to choose from, VOIP gives you another option. Never forget that while VOIP calls between sites are not metered they are not free because you are paying for the bandwidth. This is an important point that most IT staff fail to acknowledge.
VOIP allows for features between sites that are not practical to implement without it.
- Four digit dialing between sites
- Hands free intercom between sites
- Busy Lamp buttons between sites allow you to see whos on the phone at other sites
- Centralized voicemail
- Least Cost Routing of calls
- SIP trunking. Get dial tone from a company of your choice. Get a phone number from any location.
VOIP to the desktop allows you to install only one wiring structure in your building instead of two. Typically any new building gets a telephone network and a computer network. With VOIP, only the computer network is needed. This can add up to savings even if you consider the fact that computer networks that support VOIP cost more than computer networks that do not. Computer networks that support VOIP should be CAT6 and require switches that are managed with VLANs set up, QOS and POE.
VLANs keep the phones and computers separate via a virtual local area network and POE is power over ethernet to power your VOIP phones. QOS is the quality of service software that is needed to insure that your VOIP call quality is good.
VOIP is easy to implement over fiber because it can be carried on ethernet fiber networks. This is ideal for campus environments that need lightning protection between buildings.
VOIP has some advantages for cordless phones because it can work on Wi-Fi. The range of Wi-Fi handsets is only limited to the number of access points that are installed. You can walk from building to building or drive from site to site and have a cordless phone that still works.
We will now look at the bad side of VOIP.
One of VOIPs biggest problems is call quality. QOS on your LAN does nothing for calls that are sent over the WAN and in most cases VOIP over the WAN is what you want. It is very difficult to control call quality on calls being sent over the internet because your ISP does not prioritize voice over data. You can order dedicated bandwidth from your ISP (like T1 or MPLS) to overcome call quality problems but the moment you do this, your cost savings go out the window. VOIP call quality also suffers from the many conversions that it needs to go through. Your voice is carried from your handset to your phone as analog. At the phone it is converted to IP and travels to the PBX via IP. At the PBX it is converted from IP to TDM or back to analog. If the person you are calling or if the phone company is also using VOIP than this whole process is repeated all over again and the end result is a poor sounding call. Each conversion is a potential source of echo and some information is lost.
While VOIP brings some features to the table that digital phone do not, they leave many features behind that digital phones have. Several examples of these are intercom, all page, music through your phone, screened call transfers and call recording. Most of these features are not something you would want to give up. That is why most manufacturers make hybrid systems that allow them to have IP phones where needed and digital phones everywhere else. This gives you the best of both worlds.
Maintaining a VOIP system is certainly not cheaper than that of a traditional system as some would have you believe. It is true that VOIP hardware is often cheaper because you dont need all those digital cards. The skill set required to work on VOIP systems is higher and you will pay for this. Also the reliability of VOIP system is not as good at that of traditional systems. VOIP up time is 99.99% and traditional is 99.999%. This means it takes more man hours to maintain VOIP systems.
Consolidated technology means consolidated failure. Remember the cost saving of having both voice and data on the same network? This is good until that data network fails and you lose not only your data but also your phone!
In conclusion, we can see that while VOIP has its problems it continues to grow in market share. This process will allow more of the problems to be resolved which in turn will result in more growth. At the moment we recommend hybrid systems for most applications but we see the day coming when non hybrid VOIP systems will meet the needs of everyone.
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