On Nov 16, 2005, at 5:49 PM, Juan Cardenas wrote:
I own a small call center and the implementation of VOIP has been a
nightmare. Since I operate 24/7 I tend to notice more than those of
us working 9-5 of system problems. I use Voicepulse Connect!
Service and their DID’s have had problems everyday at the most
crucial hour, usually 5pm. I have already lost customers do to this
and it makes want to ask, how many like me are out there. What
steps has you taken to make your VOIP solution for reliable. Server
wise, Asterisk wise everything has been great. It’s these VOIP
outages that kill me. If it’s not about calls that don’t ring in,
it’s busy DID numbers or you cant dial out. I don’t want to point
fingers at one company, but that’s who I use. I use another company
and on my first day which was today! their DID’s went down for
about 1 hour.
So I ask those other business owners out there, What are you doing
to help protect your business from outages.
Not to give a smart-alec response, but I protect myself from VOIP
provider outages by not using one. We use a dedicated voice PRI for
all incoming and outgoing traffic, and in five years we have only had
one problem with the circuit, and that was extraordinary. (and we
ended up getting a massive credit on our account as a result when it
happened.)
<knocks on wood>
As you mentioned, you have already lost customers over this, so at
the very least, I recommend that you use a traditional PSTN circuit
(such as a T1/E1/PRI/BRI/analog) for incoming traffic and use
multiple VOIP providers for outgoing traffic. IMNSHO, telephone
service is too important to businesses (at least ours) to risk using
VOIP for incoming calls. If your incoming provider has problems,
chances are pretty high that your customers will notice. For outgoing
traffic, on the other hand, if one provider is down, you can simply
route calls out to a secondary, tertiary, etc provider and your
customers will never know any different.
If you absolutely insist on using VOIP for incoming traffic, the best
rule is to have multiple providers, because you can count on outages
no matter who you use. I would talk to the various ITSPs out there
and see what they can do to forward your traffic to another provider
in the event of an outage. Unfortunately, though, I don't think that
this service will be 100% reliable (ie: if they can't pass the call
to you, they probably can't pass the call to your backup provider,
either....)
My $0.02
Tom
PS: If you get your toll-free lines from a non-voip provider (ie: a
long-distance company), they might be able to route your calls to a
secondary VOIP provider in the event that your primary provider has
an outage.
----------------------------------------------------------
Tom Rymes
Cascade Link Systems
www.cascadelinksystems.com
(603) 375-1414
Technology solutions for small and medium sized businesses.
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