best voip provider

ronbyrne2005

i work in small office and we are considering using VOIP instead of traditional phones. we currently have 2 geographic lines who's numbers we need to keep.we have dsl broadband on one line ,we make a lot of calls to irish landlines and mobiles and some to uk and abroad. we will have to keep at least one line for DSL ,will we save much on calls? how much will it cost to buy phones/hardware(we need four phone units with maybe a cordless/wireless base station)

kippy

Might be worth contacting someone at blueface or similiar provider directly to get a breakdown of you options (which i'd say are pretty varied)
You would definetly save money with their setup but whether it suits your specific needs is another thing.
Kippy

Blaster99

If you're using eircom ADSL the call quality with Blueface will be mixed. I don't know about other ADSL providers. It depends on how they route traffic to sip.blueface.ie. I use it quite a bit and most every phone call will have problems of sorts.

You would probably buy a VoIP phone for each extension. They cost from €80 upwards. You can then do stuff like call transfer and 3-way calling easily. We use the 3-way calling quite a bit where we can setup mini conference calls easily which is very handy. You will need a router capable of traffic shaping to guarantee the VoIP traffic as well. At home I use a Draytek router that's quite cheap and cheerful and can do this and lots of other things.

Will you save money? Assuming it works, you will save money. Blueface does a business package where you get two geo numbers and a bunch of extensions for something like €35 + VAT a month with free Irish and UK landline calls.

There are also other flexibility options. I have a VoIP phone at home also that is tied to my office number so when the phone rings I can pick it either at home, in the office, or indeed on my laptop if I'm somewhere else. And I can obviously make calls out the same way.

JimmySmith

If your company can live with a few dropped calls to/from customers or even breakup of the calls then go for it. But in my opinion Blueface is not stable enough for business use, where calls = money and you are on the phone all day as opposed to only home use.
Blueface is fine 95% of the time. That other 5% pisses off customers and loses you money.

lzbones

I use freespeech.ie and EsatBT 3MB for business and I rarely have any issues with the quality of call.

I would say the basic rules for business VOIP is
1/ Use ADSL so you have at least one PSTN line
2/ Get a static IP
3/ Get a decent speed, at least 3MB.
4/ Buy decent quality hardware