How To Choose A New Phone System
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How to choose a new phone system: choosing an IP phone system
IP phone systems differ from both digital phone systems and analog phone systems because IT cables (CAT5) carry your voice transmission: your conversation is sent as data packets over the local IT network (LAN) much in the same manner as email or instant messages. This gives IP phone systems a technological edge which translates into the greatest flexibility, economy and featureset of the various types of phone system. IP phone system advantages for business includes:
- Lower voice networking costs
- Lower equipment administration costs
- Centralized network control and management
- Increased communications capabilities and productivity for remote and mobile employees
- Increased customer satisfaction through the use of distributed customer service-orientated applications such as Zeacom
IP phone systems are easily justified by the cost savings generated by avoiding expensive long distance phone services that link geographically dispersed business locations. With offices in Manchester, London and Glasgow, calls between colleagues become much cheaper by eliminating BT call charges and using the company's LAN instead. Furthermore, day-to-day administration, operations and management expenses for non IP phone systems can add up quickly. The simple need to activate a new phone or moving an extension can cost anywhere from £100 to £250 per event when involving service technicians from the manufacturer. With an IP phone system, adds, moves and changes, can be administered with simple web based tools.
IP phone systems provide remote and mobile access to advanced communications applications, including call management, messaging, contact and call centre operations. These and other applications can now be distributed over IP networks, eliminating the need for standalone phone systems for small remote office locations, and can extend significant benefits to remote and mobile teleworkers:
- Business-wide in-house voice conferencing
- Uniformed access to voicemail and other unified messaging
- Enhanced communications with upgraded call feature set extended to remote and mobile staff
- Call and contact centre interactions can be centrally managed and observed yet be extended to agents located at branch offices or working at home (ie temporary extra staff during busy periods)
- Traveling employees can access their messages, participate in conference calls and collaborate with team members as if they never left the office
- Efficient, centralized administration enables the management of multiple sites as a single system
IP phone systems enable the highest levels of customer service and productivity through computer telephony integration. Since IP telephony is computer-based, you can integrate phone functions with business applications. For example:
- Bring up the customer record of the caller automatically when you receive his/her call. This improves customer service and cutting cost by reducing time spent on each caller.
- Outbound calls can be placed directly from Outlook, removing the need for the user to type in the phone number.
These are just some examples of the added functionality that an IP phone system can give you. Sharing common business directories, contact media preferences and dynamic user presence status over time are voice technology features that are destined to become commonplace. IP Telephony fosters the creation of advanced customer service applications to drive user productivity and decrease barriers with information delivery between members of the enterprise and with the enterprise and its customers.
Hot desking (the process of being able to easily move offices/desks based on the task at hand) is very popular. With an IP phone system the user simply takes his phone to his new desk and no extra cabling is required. Users can roam too - if an employee has to work from home, he/she can simply fire up their software phone and are able to answer calls to their extension, just as they would in the office. Calls can be diverted anywhere in the world.
IP phone systems are based on the open SIP standard, and you can mix and match any SIP hardware or software phone with any SIP-based IP phone system with appropriate licenses, PSTN Gateway or VOIP provider. In contrast, an analog or digital phone system require brand phones to use advanced features, which ties offices further into a particular brand - handsets are usually the largest part of the overall cost.
IP Phone Systems, VoIP phone systems, what's the difference?
A VoIP phone system uses the same idea as an IP phone system: namely packet-based voice transmission technologies that allow telephone calls to be made over an IP network. However, in the case of a VoIP phone system, this is over the internet, and in popular culture, the label for an IP phone system has become VoIP phone system, largely due to the increase in popularity of the consumer grade services such as Skype. It is, however, perfectly possible to use an IP phone system internally which connects onto a non-VoIP line externally. In summary: VoIP is IP telephony over the outside world, an IP phone system is an internal arrangement.
Voice quality on IP and VoIP Phone Systems
Consumer VoIP phone systems over the public internet have a poor reputation because the signal is not always reliable. This is easily explained and always a case of "what you get is what you pay for". VoIP phones, particularly on residential internet connections, are easily congested, and there is no guaranteed bandwidth for your voice connection using consumer VoIP devices and software. This can and will cause poor voice quality and/or the call to be dropped completely.
To counter any similar problems in business IP phone systems used as a VoIP phone system, we recommend the purchase of both quality outside connectivity and also giving voice a guaranteed section of the internal bandwidth by using a managed network switch. Network data usage can impact on voice quality, and a managed network switch makes it possible to seperate out the voice from data; reserving bandwidth and therefore assuring quality for voice. It is factually impossible to guarantee quality of service without such a device: if you are obtaining quotes from various phone system resellers you must make sure that this has been included in the quote price.
IP phone systems and power
IP phones require electrical power supply to operate, unlike digital or analog phones for which the power is supplied in the BT1308 cabling (like at home). Supplying electrical power to an IP phone can be done in one of two ways: either every phone can have its own plug and power supply lead (often inconvenient) or the power can be supplied over the IT network using something called "Power over Ethernet" (PoE). Power over Ethernet or PoE technology is an established system to pass electrical power safely, along with data, over Ethernet cabling - ie over your IT network. PoE does not require new cables to be installed but will require a PoE switch. With PoE, electrical power is supplied over the differential pairs of wires found in the Cat5 Ethernet cables, and comes from a dedicated PoE-enabled network device stored in your server room - the PoE switch. Therefore, to purchase an IP phone system, you may also need to have your phone system installer include and install a PoE switch on your order if you do not already have one and you choose to use PoE. Again, you must make sure that this has been included on your quote.
So, an IP phone system needs all these extra switches?!
No! You do not need to purchase 2 extra seperate network switches. The Netgear switches that we recommend to our customers perform both functions: they are both managed network switches and POE switches. Switches vary widely in price: Cisco and HP switches are relatively expensive whereas we find that Netgear switches offer better value for money and perform all the functionality required without the expensive, inbuilt optional extras suited more for enterprise scale use. The price difference between verious switches (a four figure sum) makes the omission of the switches you need to guarantee voice quality in your quote an especially dubious sales tactic, one that you need to be aware of.
IP phone systems and handsets
One thing about IP phone systems is that they are not as handset specific as digital phone systems. In other words, you do not absolutely have to use an Avaya handset on an Avaya IP phone system; many different brands of IP handsets can be used with appropriate IP licenses (SIP handsets). On digital systems of all manufacturers, however, you can only use that manufacturer's handsets because each digital system is designed differently.Why might you NOT want an IP phone system?
IP phone system offer a lot of advantages but there are also certain situations in which they are not appropriate:
- Your IT network and its capacity
- IT networks can and do become clogged depending on the amount of data that traverses the system; adding telephony over the same network may push it beyond capacity. A company, for example, that already has an extremely high use network with large files being saved and written continuously such as a graphic design company might find that a digital phone system, in which voice is on a completely seperate network, might be the more sensible choice.
- Your connectivity to the outside world
- This is true of any system - there is little point in purchasing an IP phone system to use as a VoIP phone system if your connectivity to the outside world doesn't match its needs. Connecting 3x100 man offices using uncontested consumer ADSL connectivity is likely to lead to purchaser disappointment and is a false economy. In the IP phone system world, you get what you pay for.
- Partitioning of voice and data
- In some cases it can be more appropriate to keep voice and data entirely seperate. For example, it might not be especially appropriate to add voice to an ultra secure mission critical data sensitive data network.
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