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

[Peter A. Ericksen]

My thoughts on dealing with incoming calls and the propensity of voip providers to fail  is that ideally I will have 2 or 3 analog POTS lines with the Call Forward Variable feature enabled.  

I could use the POTS lines to dial out to 911, toll free, and as a failover (for local/ld calls).  

I would Call Forward these lines to a voip DID for incoming calls and give out the POTS number as my phone number instead of the voip DID.  

The Call Forward Variable feature allows unlimited forwarding paths (check with your local carrier or CLEC, ymmv) so I would be able to receive multiple simultaneous calls.  If the voip provider failed I could change the Call Forwarding feature to forward calls to either a different voip provider or a cell phone or some other local number.

Obviously I would not have a separate POTS line for every DID number, but at least for the important ones such as main incoming line, main support line, main sales line, etc.




-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Mike Fedyk
Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 7:58 PM
To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-biz] Who uses only VOIP for their business?

Michael Welter wrote:
> 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.
>>
> [switch from one provider to another, then another and back ]
>
> Rather than burning a bunch of time with customer service, I'm now 
> bouncing around to whatever vendor that is working.  Eventually, as in 
> the TelIAX case, their problems get fixed.  Hopefully, NuFone will 
> start accepting calls someday.
>
> So, I would recommend having a current accounts with several vendors. 
> And you might want to read about ChanIsAvail.
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+cmd+ChanIsAvail

Yes, let asterisk deal with the flakiness of the VOIP providers.  Though how do you deal with this for incoming calls?  Have the incoming numbers forward to another number on another provider if they don't go through?  
Anyone have any details on a setup like this?
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