In this article, I’m going to cover the meat of what had to be done to get it up and running. The process itself was not hard, however, there were several kinks that had to be ironed out before it was running smoothly.

Hardware

We, being the happy-go-lucky geeks that we are, decided to buy our own PBX hardware, with embedded Asterisk software. We found the Ipeya SIPS listed on eBay where they sell their IP PBX as a package with 5, 10, or 20 phones included. The price couldn’t be beat when we compared with buying the phone and PBX seperate from another vendor.

Software

Unfortunately, the software on the Ipeya is fairly weak and unintuitive. It’s perfectly suited for personal or home office usage, but trying to squeeze the functionality we need for a small business is a lesson in patience. It’s a custom UI built on top of the Astersk system for VoIP, and provides an adequate interface to the major sections you need to get yourself up and running.

One of the big problems right now is that out-of-the-box solutions are few and far between and none I have seen to date are mature enough to be a sleek, sophisticated solution for an Asterisk UI. VoIP is a new technology and the software support has a long way to go to catch up.

Before buying your software, be sure to insist on a thorough test drive with the vendor to see how easy it is to navigate and make changes to your system.

I’ll start with some basic terms that I had to learn and understand before I felt capable to actually picking a VoIP provider and hardware/software. Each term below is linked to the Wikipedia definition (if it exists, otherwise a link to related website) for the technology. Please do further reading on your own if needed.

VoIP – Voice Over IP
PBX – Private Branch Exchange
SIP – Session Initiation Protocol
IAX2 – Inter-Asterisk eXchange protocol
Asterisk – Software PBX solution
POTS – Plain old telephpone service
RJ45 – Eight pin telephone cable
DID – Direct inward dialing number

Picking a VoIP Provider

This is the first step in the process and the most important. I met with five (5) different vendors and ended up learning different things from each person/group who came in to meet with me. Since this is a new technology, it’s important to meet with as many local providers that you can locate because some of them will try to blow smoke up your ass, others will be new players in the market and have limited knowledge, while others might be experienced pros with multiple clients successfully running VoIP solutions.

Out of the five vendors I talked with, only one spoke with knowledge and confidence during our meeting and ended up providing us with the best quote. When speaking with vendors you want to make sure that they completely understand your needs. Here’s some basic things to consider when starting down the VoIP path.

1. Do you have qualified local providers? In essence, they’re re-sellers of national providers, but you’ll get better customer service.
2. How many phone numbers will you need?
3. Do you want to have POTS lines as backup (in case of power failure, or for fax machines)? How many?
4. Do you want to buy and configure your own PBX hardware or have the VoIP provider manage that service?
5. Do you need unlimited long distance on all of your lines, or just specific ones (e.g. customer support)?
6. How many call paths will the provider give you on each DID line?
7. Do any local providers support the IAX2 protocol or just the SIP protocol?

Talk to your provider in depth about what your company needs and then ask them to provide you with a detailed plan about how they would set up the system. This is the best way to weed out the hacks from the pros.

To Own Or Not To Own?

Are you going to buy and maintain your own PBX? This is a very important question you need to consider before going to any vendor, and there are many issues to consider before arriving at an answer?

1. Does your company have a secure network?
2. Is anyone at your company capable of learning the Asterisk software?
3. If needed, can your run new ethernet cabling required for the phones?
4. Is someone at your company an expert at network administration?
5. How much Internet bandwidth do you get in your office location? Plan on using a solid 768k upstream to handle the voice packets.

If you didn’t blink at any of these questions, then you most likely will be able to handle running your own PBX. If some of those questions looked like Greek, you might consider letting your VoIP provider handle the administration of your PBX.

Even if you don’t host your own PBX, many VoIP providers now provide an easy-to-use Web interface to your PBX so you can customize features such as call-forwarding, call waiting, hold music, auto attendant messages, conferce calls, voice mail, etc.

Cost of Service

How much cost savings do you get from VoIP instead of POTS? The savings can undoubtedly be substantial, and can pay for the installation and maintenance of the hardware within a few months and at most a couple of years. From all of the vendors I talked to, here’s an average of the costs involved in VoIP.

1. Unlimited VoIP lines: $53/month/line
2. Metered VoIP lines: $11.50/month/line
3. Metered usage rate: $0.029/minute
4. POTS lines: $21.50/month/line

Now, let’s compare those costs to what a traditional PBX cost structure might be. I’m even going to be very liberal in the monthly costs.

1. Unlimited POTS lines: $90/month/line
2. Metered POTS lines: $21.50/month/line
3. Metered usage rate: $0.17/minute

Just in line maintenance costs, you can save up to $37/month/line, which is huge. In addition, you can save up to 15 cents per minute on usage. Just take a wild guess at your monthly phone usage for your company and make a quick calculation on your savings. I think you’ll be impressed. It’s well known how much money a VoIP solution can save a company, but the one lingering doubt that many companies harbor is Quality of Service. I’ll touch on that in a later part, but I’ll just hint that QoS may depend more on you than the VoIP provider, and can easily be improved if there are issues.

Summary: Part I

So far I’ve covered the basic issues involved with VoIP solutions, and none of them are simple. If there is a short list of things I want you to remember from this article, they are:

1. This is a new technology, so be prepared for growing pains
2. Many providers are still learning themselves, so look for the ones who know the most
3. A good level of technical knowledge will be very helpful when making decisions

Lastly, don’t be afraid to ask as many questions as you need before feeling comfortable with a VoIP provider. If you feel that they can’t answer your questions, or are leading you down a path that you don’t want to go, walk away and move on to someone who will help you install the system that is right for you.. not for them.

Part II