On Saturday, August 06, 2011 10:59:01 AM Jason Cotton wrote: > We have a very old intertel axxess 5.1 system and we are looking at > upgrading to a VOIP system. Does anyone on list have any recommendations > of systems/services?
The first part of your decision-making process should be to decide on your infrastructure. Do you want to continue to use POTS lines between the telco and your office(s)? Or are you just going to use VoIP internally? If you have multiple offices and are going to use POTS lines to talk to the world, then do you want to use your own dedicated or virtual connections between your offices? If you're not going to use POTS to talk to the world, will you be using dedicated VoIP trunks (for example, dedicated T-1 or segmented T-1), or will you be sharing your Internet connection for your connection to VoIP? If you're going to use VoIP internally do you intend to switch to VoIP phones, use existing proprietary phone, existing analog generic phones, or some combination? If switching to VoIP phones, are you biased towards an on-premises PBX or a hosted PBX? Do you prefer the simplicity of getting your PBX, your lines and your minutes all from the same company, perhaps with one bill? Or do you prefer the flexibility of buying the pieces individually? Do you prefer to do any of the conversion yourself, or buy it from the pbx vendor, or a third party? Of course you may not have answers to all of these questions now. If you're not sure of the direction in which you should go I'd highly recommend finding and paying a truly independent consultant to help you decide, as otherwise you're going to get salesreps, consultants, and vendors all interested in filling their needs rather than yours. Once I'd decided, then I'd put out RFQs (requests for quotations) to several vendors who appear to meet your requirements. I've been going to various telephone shows for years, and I've seen prices all over the map, from very high to very low, and also a lot of different products being sold as VoIP. I've seen people stealing minutes and selling them to unsuspecting clients, I've had two pbx systems hacked, and in both cases the vendor wrongly blaming us for not changing the default passwords (we had). Yet even for my small company, I'd never go back to pots. Good luck. Jeff -- Jeff Lasman Post Office Box 52200, Riverside, CA 92517 Our jplists address used on lists is for list email only Phone +1 909 266-9209, or see: "http://www.nobaloney.net/contactus.html";
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