VOIP

Mr Bump

Hi all
I am looking for some direction, i am in the middle of setting up a SME business and now looking at cost effective ways for business phone packages, Would anyone know who is the best provider of VOIP phone lines, i am looking to be able to set up a fax line, and 2 to 3 phone lines,

Thanking you all in advance

Hope i have this in the right section, sometimes it is hard to know where to post a thread on the boards

bon ami

There are a couple of providers about but I would recommend you do your research carefully depending on your location and your broadband width. VOIP may well be cheaper but the quality is not always as good as it made out to be depending on a number of factors. Voice quality is not always great in my experience and we answer calls for many businesses some using VOIP but the majority using ISDN. In my own business I could save €300 to €400 per month but because of uncertainty of quality I chose not too (at present)

Agree. I have a line with blueface, but our main line is analogue. The call quality is usually pristine, but occasionally so bad as to be unusable (and not because of broadband speed).

AndyJB

Mr Bump wrote: »

Hi all
I am looking for some direction, i am in the middle of setting up a SME business and now looking at cost effective ways for business phone packages, Would anyone know who is the best provider of VOIP phone lines, i am looking to be able to set up a fax line, and 2 to 3 phone lines,

Thanking you all in advance

Hope i have this in the right section, sometimes it is hard to know where to post a thread on the boards

Evening,
I use Goldfish.ie and have both Irish and UK numbers with them (3 Yrs+). There are a number of others on the Irish market. I've also used blueface, customer care was an issue I had with them so I moved. They may have improved since.

Main issue with voip technology is not usually the provider, but the type and quality of the broadband you use. If your broadband is a standard 3 or 4 mg connection voip quality will suffer if you're doing other broadband heavy loading at time of calls.

If you can, pay a little more for bigger b/band capacity and your voip shouldn't be an issue. Use speedtest.net to keep an eye on your broadband speeds.

Best of luck.

SimonMcCann

Hi,

The most popular Irish VoIP service providers are Blueface.ie and Goldfish.ie. It is good to go with one of these for customer service reasons. However it is also worth noting that you are not tied to Irish service providers and you can receive much cheaper calls to mobiles using a provider such as VoIP gain.

If you go to a site that sells VoIP phones such as EagleVision.ie you can buy a phone such as the Siemens Gigaset A510IP that will allow you to setup multiple VoIP accounts. Therefore when you are making a call you can decide which provider to use. Such a phone can also use a fixed line connection so if wanted you could use a fixed line to receive calls, voipgain to make calls to Irish mobiles and use Blueface for all other outbound calls.

Another point worth considering is that any broadband connection should be effective for VoiP calls with the correct setup. A typical VoIP call requires only 10kb per second. Problems typically arise when VoIP packets are not given priority across a network and can be affected by a big download for example. This problem can be solved by configuring your router to give priority to voice packets (usually you just need to change a simple setting on your router).

I hope this helps anyway and good luck with the new setup.

Tel head

SimonMcCann wrote: »

Hi,

The most popular Irish VoIP service providers are Blueface.ie and Goldfish.ie. It is good to go with one of these for customer service reasons. However it is also worth noting that you are not tied to Irish service providers and you can receive much cheaper calls to mobiles using a provider such as VoIP gain.

If you go to a site that sells VoIP phones such as EagleVision.ie you can buy a phone such as the Siemens Gigaset A510IP that will allow you to setup multiple VoIP accounts. Therefore when you are making a call you can decide which provider to use. Such a phone can also use a fixed line connection so if wanted you could use a fixed line to receive calls, voipgain to make calls to Irish mobiles and use Blueface for all other outbound calls.

Another point worth considering is that any broadband connection should be effective for VoiP calls with the correct setup. A typical VoIP call requires only 10kb per second. Problems typically arise when VoIP packets are not given priority across a network and can be affected by a big download for example. This problem can be solved by configuring your router to give priority to voice packets (usually you just need to change a simple setting on your router).

I hope this helps anyway and good luck with the new setup.

Www.telcom.ie

capefear

Hi Guys

I used blueface in the past but changed to goldfish.ie and no issues with them to date.

As mentioned above it depends on the broadband not the provider.

I would recommend you get the main telephone number as analogue its about €20 a month and thats the number your customers get you at, your main switch so to speak. Then get two or three voip lines from goldfish you can use these numbers to dial out your dirct dial numbers so to speak. I would get another voip number for your fax and that way you can receive and send faxes to email. The main benefit is that your customers will always be able to get you on the main number if your voip numbers is ever down.
eircom is €20ish, a voip number costs €2.50 a month from goldfish.ie and then I think you have to pay a few quid extra for a call package.

HTH

Talk123

Hi I am in the telecomms business ,its true that voip depend on broadband,it can be great ,it can also let you down and lose you business ,but there are other options
1 Vodafone do a package for 59 including calls and broadband for one line
2 UPC give free line rental but you need to be in a cabled area
3 You can put a gsm router onto a phone system so all mobile calls are routed through a fixed plan structure

Theres also Skype,which is voip again but callers can ring you from their laptop,or whatever for free

In the end a lot depends on the number of calls and where to ,if there are not a lot of calls and you get a reasonable call package you can save yourself and your customers a lot of grief:)