SUMMARY: [asterisk-biz] Does VoIP Really Work for Serious Business?

[Voip Xpress]

Since the original posting a few days ago, I have had a huge response from 
the mailing list.  (Is VoIP  a case of "the emperors new clothes".)   
Interestingly, the majoriity of respondents chose to reply directly to me 
without posting to the rest of the mailing list, so I will summarise the 
responses:

- With the exception of a few (extremely smart, lucky or delusional Asterisk 
users), the response has been that outside the enterprise (or at least 
anywhere neat the public internet), Asterisk is at best cellphone quality.

- The quality of DSL/cable access is an easy place to start pointing the 
blame.  It is definitely a factor, but not the only one.  Most users 
experienced success with point to point, presumably including DSL/cable so 
it can't be all bad.  Our experience would tend to agree with this.

- Within the enterprise, there seem to be few VoIP problems.

- The jury seems to be out on whether putting  an Asterisk server in the 
path does any harm.  When there is no transcoding, the concensus is it does 
not do any harm.

- I did not receive one response saying that there is VoIP LD termination 
out there that is any better than the rest.  Our experience seems to be 
typical.

- Received quite a few responses from providers and users of TDM 
termination.  Although more expensive than VoIP termination, this would seem 
to remove some of the internet variables.  I would be interested to hear 
what others' experience has been like with this type of service.

Is cellphone quality really good enough?  Firstly, most people would be 
happy if they could reach cell quality over VoIP.  On cellphone,  people pay 
a premium for convenience and in many cases, the service deterioraition is 
predictable:  we know which areas have dodgy coverage and live with it.  
VoIp can be dodgy anytime any place.

Conclusion...unless anyone can talk me out of it:

VoIP LD calls can be cheap, but rarely worth it for business.   For 
N.America and western Europe, business customers may be able to save a few 
c/min, but most will not accept the  quality trade off. Calliing a customer 
back 3 times to complete a 10 minute transaction doesn't fly.  They will 
walk.  Calls to more exotic locations where customers can save 50c/min may 
still be worth the trade off, but those customers arent that easy to find.  
As TDM prices continue to fall, and in N.America tend to zero, I don't see 
this improving any time soon.


If you are starting a business predicated on VoIP reducing business 
customers LD bills, think again.

VX



>From: "Voip Xpress" <voipxpress at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk 
>Discussion<asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
>To: asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com
>Subject: [asterisk-biz] Does VoIP Really Work for Serious Business?
>Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 10:43:05 -0800
>
>Discussion...is VoIP really ready for serious business use.
>
>We have been installing Asterisk for customers for about a year now, and we 
>are beginning to wonder if parts of VoIP are really ready for serious 
>business.  Long Distance in particular is a problem.
>
>We use 3 LD providers, one a Tier 2 provider (ie buys from L3, Sprint etc) 
>and a couple of  others lower down the food tree (that are often discussed 
>on this message board).   We still find that almost all customers complain 
>about dropped calls, echo, dead connections from time to time.  My guess is 
>that maybe 75-90% of calls are connected with decent quality.  The rest are 
>problems for various reasons, and customers are getting fed up with it.
>
>We have a primary carrier for each route based on quality and cost, and 
>fallback to another carrier if the call cannot be connected, but we find 
>invariably that carriers take calls and then dont connect them.
>
>We are at the point of stopping offering LD service.  We make a few c/min, 
>but the customer disatisfaction is just not worth it.  People wont accept 
>Skype quality 10-20% of the time.  There is still a good business case for 
>customers to install VoIP within the enterprise, and for Off premise users, 
>but to save a few c/min on LD is not worth the trouble.  We have considered 
>connecting customers up directly to a carrier to cut out the connection 
>through our own servers.
>
>We have also have mixed success with origination...busy signals, missed 
>calls and have stopped taking new users.
>
>So...are we alone.  Is it possible to get VoIP LD to be as good as TDM 95% 
>of the time, and if so how?  We dont have the time to try calls with every 
>carrier to every area code every day!
>
>(and please, no responses from VoIPjet, Voxee, Junction, broadvoice etc etc 
>saying how you are different.  We know that you all suck to varying 
>degrees!)
>
>Help!  VoipXpress
>
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