Viewing 18 posts - 1 through 18 (of 18 total)
  • FTTP & VOIP
  • zilog6128
    Full Member

    Upgrading to FTTP at work (small business) so will lose landline. Probably only get half a dozen calls per day and never dial out, but still want to retain a phone number for the foreseeable (but don’t want to spend much on it 😂)

    We have Teams via Office365 although don’t use it currently, but my understanding is it comes with VOIP software? I think we can port our landline number and then use Teams (as an alternative to using a dedicated VOIP provider, e.g. RingCentral etc at additional expense)? Is that right? Anyone done this?

    Ideally we’ll want actual phone handsets, not headsets just taking calls via the computer. Can we get something like 3 or 4 of these
    https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/40563-yealink-sip-t30p/
    and plug them into the network via POE switch? At the moment I have a PBX system installed so that all the phones ring, but then whoever answers can transfer the call to any of the other phones. That functionality would be fine. Extension numbers (so only 1 phone rings) would be good but not essential.

    norbert-colon
    Full Member

    I do this sort of thing for a living… You could put a little phone system in that has phone lines provided over the internet. However there’s no real need given that Teams Telephony works fine and basically creates a mini business phone system.

    You have to buy an upgraded Teams phone system licence on top of your standard office 365.

    You then have to pay for your calls. You can do this by bundling this in with your Teams licence, but it is a bit more expensive and means that you have ported everything to Microsoft, which might make it harder to move away from them in the future.
    The alternative is to talk to a Telecoms provider about Teams Direct routing… they then provide the calls into/out of Teams and Teams provides the phone system function. If you don’t make many calls then this will be cheaper overall.

    You can have Teams hardware phones and they work well but you may find that if you can persuade folks to use headsets on their PC and/or the Teams mobile app then you won’t have the additional expense of phones.

    If you can also persuade folks to use Teams for chat, video and file access etc. then it makes even more sense as you use one app for most stuff.

    This all works pretty well in a Small business environment.

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    @norbert-colon thanks!

    you may find that if you can persuade folks to use headsets on their PC and/or the Teams mobile app then you won’t have the additional expense of phones.

    that’s not going to happen 😂 Will any VOIP (SIP?) phone work with Teams or does it have to be a Teams-specific one?

    The alternative is to talk to a Telecoms provider about Teams Direct routing… they then provide the calls into/out of Teams

    any particular provider you’d recommend for this? I see the Teams Phone licence is £6/month/user which is a bit more than I’d like to spend given the volume of calls we receive! Even if we just received calls only, and had no ability to dial out, that would be fine.

    If you can also persuade folks to use Teams for chat, video and file access etc. then it makes even more sense as you use one app for most stuff.

    I guess all that might be useful in time, but we’re pretty old-school in this regard so this is just to replace a voice-only landline really at the moment!

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    Cougar
    Full Member

    Asterisk?

    Home

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    I’m vaguely aware of Asterisk as a self-hosted/open source PBX thing (I’ve seen people on the Home Assistant group use it as a SIP server for internal intercoms) but I don’t think it helps me here… I need some kind of external service I think that provides an interface between a landline phone number and my internets?

    stevehine
    Full Member

    Who’s the new provider ? You may well find that they are happy to provide a basic VoIP over the new fibre connection (e.g. both BT and Vodafone in the consumer space offer this; I appreciate they are not business providers!)

    Edit: Vodafone business also includes a single fixed line delivered by VoIP linky

    norbert-colon
    Full Member

    Sorry – I typed a long reply in and then lost access 🙁

    If you really are old school and you want to avoid spending out, then why not just stick with your current phone system and install (or more likely just reconnect your existing) analogue line and stay working as you are.

    That way your only cost is line rental for the analogue line and you don’t have to do/buy anything.

    Sounds like anything else is going to cost you a bit for minimal business benefit – so stay as you are and buy yourself the time to work out how/whether the fancy tech is going to deliver anything for you moving forwards?

    Nowt wrong with staying with the old tech if it works/is cheap?

    stevehine
    Full Member

    That’s a good point. If the new provider doesn’t supply a digital line; you could just keep your old one; you don’t have to lose it !

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    @norbert-colon @stevehine we were with BT business for years but their customer service is so awful finally had enough & binned them off entirely. Have had Plusnet at home for a long time with no issues (yes, I know they’re owned by BT as their “value” brand but just seem better in every way including UK call centres!) so went with them for work. But, as a residential customer rather than business as they told me somewhat unbelievably they don’t offer FTTP to business customers and have no roadmap towards doing so!

    They don’t offer the choice of a standard phone line alongside FTTP so that’s not an option, besides it was my understanding phone lines would be phased out entirely by 2025 so will need to deal with this at some point soon anyway?

    benpinnick
    Full Member

    Ill chip in with TTNC as a recommendation they’re an online VOIP/Virtual PBX provider thats mostly aimed at the SME market – wont cost a huge amount PCM for the service you need, and can supply yealink pre-configured phones at reasonable prices. (We use the ‘rugged’ one, it’s good). You may find it easier than managing your own PBX long run.

    Its pretty much all plug and play and you just add remove services via their web portal.

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    @benpinnick Thanks, price looks good plus they’ll port our existing number. I guess with their managed service we’d need to pay per user (very reasonable price though!) whereas if I hosted my own PBX as per Cougar’s suggestion earlier then possibly we could get away with just 1 user and handle the routing to extensions etc at our end? But yeah probably more hassle than it’s worth!

    We use the ‘rugged’ one, it’s good

    have you got a link to that? couldn’t see it on their site!

    norbert-colon
    Full Member

    Just as an aside – Have you thought about what is going to happen to your phone number?… or is that not important to you? You may or may not have the option to transfer that to another service – being a residential customer may complicate that.

    If £6 per month per user is putting you off then I’d be avoiding spending anything at all.

    You have 2 choices

    1) Stick with what you have and just order an analogue line from any telco (or ask Plusnet not to disconnect the old one)
    2) Put something new in place now, that is almost certainly going to be overkill for your telephony requirements right now, based on what you describe and will definitely cost you quite a bit. (licences, external lines, Call charges, Phone handsets, POE switches, Time for you or someone else to set up etc etc etc)

    Personally I’d be going with sticking with what you have, keeping the cash in my bank account and buying the time to work out how I was going to use the technology moving forwards. That way when you do spend the money, you’ll be in a place to take advantages of some of the other benefits that Teams or equivalent hosted system will give you. Otherwise you’ll spend a chunk of money to replace something that gives you basic telephony functionality with something that you use pretty much to do the same thing. Doesn’t seem worth it.

    Don’t be scared by this 2025 thing – folks out there are using that as a sales tool.

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    Have you thought about what is going to happen to your phone number?… or is that not important to you?

    ideally I’d like to keep it, not the end of the world if not. Moving forward get rid entirely at some point so that first point of contact for customers is email or some kind of messaging so I can spend less time on the phone!!

    If £6 per month per user is putting you off then I’d be avoiding spending anything at all.

    it’s not so much a budgetary issue more that spending 50% of what we’ll be paying for 900Mb/s internet on receiving about half a dozen useful phone calls per day seems silly 😂

    Personally I’d be going with sticking with what you have, keeping the cash in my bank account and buying the time to work out how I was going to use the technology moving forwards.

    yeah I see what you’re saying. I didn’t actually realise that having an analog (or digital?) phone line from someone else was an option (Plusnet won’t even entertain it!!) so will look into that too.

    will definitely cost you quite a bit. (licences, external lines, Call charges, Phone handsets, POE switches, Time for you or someone else to set up etc etc etc)

    although the cost doesn’t seem that huge actually, £4/month/user from the company benpinnick mentioned above would cover everything VOIP related I assume (if keeping it simple & not going down the Teams route)? and then new handsets (POE switch we already have) plus time obviously to set it all up.

    NJA
    Full Member

    We use 3CX, it has the option for handsets, softphones with headsets or using your mobile through the App to make work calls. It was a PITA when we were on basic fibre as our upload speed was only 5 meg, now we are on full fibre it works really well.

    A bit like your mobile contract you buy a bundle of minutes each month, it seems pretty cheap compared with our old phone system.

    lamp
    Free Member

    I use 2Circles for our company telephony. They did for us exactly what you’re looking for. Google them! We made a seamless switch within a few hours! Dead easy and we have couple of DECT phones or you can have an app on your laptop / mobile which is great when working away.

    ….i’m not on commission! 🙂

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    thanks, will check out both those options too

    Russell96
    Full Member

    Yay here, I’m not using the teams integration, but the user management, call routing and recording controls work well for me. Here’s their page on teams. https://www.yay.com/voice/integrations/microsoft-teams-direct-routing/

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    update: went with TTNC in the end, could not have been simpler (bar porting our existing no. from BT but that’s another story 😂) just plugged in the phones they sent & we were away! £4/month per user + £2/month for the number.

    They also offer something called a “SIP trunk” which seems to be for self-hosting, I guess either Asterisk as mentioned above or I think our Unifi router can do it with their app? Might look into that at some point if I ever get a minute! Would bring the cost down to basically a single-user charge for however many users we want, if I read it right.

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