[Asterisk-biz] Who uses only VOIP for their business?

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005, 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.
"You gotta pay to play in the tall grass with the big dogs."

What is your budget? Can you afford something *more* than voicepulse
connect? If no, discussion is over.

> So I ask those other business owners out there, What are you doing to
> help protect your business from outages.
Outbound failover is easy - if one provider returns busy or failure, try
another provider. Inbound is far harder - there's no way to "fail over" a
number if the current carrier is not sending you calls. But you still can
attempt to get better reliability. Keep in mind, the closer you are to
"real carrier network", the less parts can break (anything from switches
to your providers shut down for nonpayment to their provider, etc). 

If all you want are inbound numbers in a specific area, just get a PRI
from your friendly CLEC. Sure, its anywhere from 300 to 700$, but it'll
stay up all night and ask for more. If you can't afford that, try to find
someone serious *in your area* with a PRI and VOIP switches, who would
then send you calls.

Ideally, you want to colocate your equipment with your carrier (cough
pilosoft cough txlink cough) - you will isolate yourself from the intarweb
breakage (if you are taking SIP handoff) and save on the cost of the PRI
(if you are taking . Keep in mind that "Voice over public internet" is
inherently unreliable and there is nothing you can do to change it. By
colocating with your telco, you avoid issues with public internet.

If you need nationwide DIDs, regretfully, you are SOL - big boys require 
obscene minimums to talk to you directly (anywhere from 10 to 20k$ mrc) - 
so you have to buy from a reseller. Now, there are resellers and there are 
resellers. I can't really give you an advice on whom to go to - but if you 
aren't spending spending X00$/mo+ before you can expect any kind of 
service, and even then, you aren't guaranteed service. So, do your 
homework. 

*DO NOT* buy from someone who is not buying from the big boys directly 
(reseller of a reseller = death)

*DO NOT* buy from retail providers (basically, unless you can get someone
intelligent on the phone within 1 hour, do not bet your company on it).