web page VoIP Phone Systems - When done wrong, hurts.
Christopher Reagoso, April 15, 2008 * DRAFT * Revisions to follow, stay tuned!
By revealing the dirty little secret of VoIP phone systems to you, a dirty little secret equipment vendors don't like to talk much about, I seriously risk being excluded from every good party thrown by my computer tech friends in Philadelphia, especially since many of them are trying to "get into the phone business" by selling VoIP systems to Small and Medium Business (SMB) customers with the promise of lower phone bills and a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). To make matters worse, some of my tech friends enjoy confusing matters using abbreviations and acronyms in conversation like SMB, TCO, as well as SIP, QoS, MOS, TDM, as if use of those terms establishes some kind of an authority...
Even though I risk being shunned by my tech pals, I suspect I'll also make a lot of new SMB friends, be kept in better company with them, and be satisfied in knowing that I saved my new SMB friends from the hassle of poorly implemented VoIP systems by writing this article...
It sure is nice when you pick up the phone, and it just works. There's a dial tone, and you push buttons, and your call goes through.
That is changing with the introduction of cheap VoIP phone systems and VoIP phone service.
There's nothing wrong with VoIP itself - the problem is that vendors are trying to sell VoIP technology to consumers that will not benefit from it on promises of saving some money on long distance calls or adding some extra lines (SIP trunks) to phone systems for almost no money.
Adding to the problem, phone vendors love selling VoIP systems since they make more money when they sell VoIP systems, and some vendors will do anything to close the deal. It's easy to make more money selling VoIP phone systems to small businesses. In the mind of the small business owner, the hardware expense competes with the monthly recurring expense of the phone bill. If there's a way to get the monthly cost of the phone bill down, maybe they can afford the new phone system.
The small business owner sees the promise of a cheaper monthly phone bill and decides that they can afford the VoIP phone system. Even though a traditional phone system actually costs a little less than the VoIP system, the monthly bills for traditional phone service will cost a little more, so the traditional phone system is ruled out.
Hardware vendors selling VoIP systems make more because they use the phenomena of the smaller phone bill as a way to justify the expense of the system, so the vendor will sell a few extra phone systems that month.
When the small business owner connects their new phone system to their internet, they are suprised to discover that the VoIP calls are poorer in quality (fuzzy, sometimes voice cuts out, sometimes calls drop). This is because the VoIP traffic competes with all of the office's other internet traffic. The VoIP hardware vendor is quick and correct in pointing out that it's not a problem with the equipment they sold to the client, but it is a problem with the customer's local area network, internet connection, or VoIP telephone service provider.
Many disappointed small business owners now face the fact "when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is." When they try to leave their VoIP provider they find they have to pay fees to terminate and sometimes lose their phone numbers.
To resolve the problem, the business owner must switch to ordinary telephone lines, or add an additional internet connection to their office dedicated to their telephone system. While the extra internet connection may help, it cannot permanently resolve the problem.
The problem with VoIP isn't actually a VoIP problem at all - it's a hype problem - a problem with peoples' expectations of what VoIP can deliver versus what it was designed to deliver, and by new vendors and inexperienced users misapplying the technology to try to save two cents a minute on phone calls.
VoIP frequently doesn't work well on the internet - and it's not a problem with the speed of the internet, or the speed of your connection to the internet - it's a problem with the "Quality of Service" or QoS on the internet.
QoS is a feature that lets you (or more specifically, trusted network operators) control the priority of data traffic on a network.
On the open internet, it's like the wild west - this is by design and will never change. Nobody's network traffic has priority over anyone else's. On a good day, everything flows fine - probably even most of your VoIP traffic. On an average day there's regional outages, routine maintenance, and other problems that cause a delay of network traffic. The internet even has a few "rush-hours," usually when the kids get home and before everyone goes to work. These delays may last only a half-a-second, maybe a little more, and YouTube'ers, and music downloaders don't mind. If your email is delayed a few seconds, you probably don't mind that either. You probably also wouldn't notice, or wouldn't even care, if you were downloading web pages and there was a one or two second delay.
VoIP packets are the some of the most sensitive of all network traffic. Any disturbance, any delay, or even if too many of them arrive in the wrong order an your phone call goes fuzzy or drops.
Equipment vendors selling VoIP hardware will frequently dismiss the QoS issue and tell you that you only need to use a router with QoS on it. What they don't tell you is that the router can only control outbound network traffic, and it cannot control inbound traffic - or what "the internet is throwing at you."
Putting a QoS router on your internet connection is a band-aid - it does not permanently fix the the problem. If someone on your network is on YouTube, the internet is throwing video at you. If someone on your network is listening to streaming audio or internet radio, the internet is already throwing audio at you. Add that to inbound email, web sessions, virtual private network (VPN) traffic, intensive remote desktop sessions and other forms of remote office access, and your VoIP service gets very unreliable. You can't fix the problem by throwing more bandwidth (more speed) at it either. You have to control QoS to fix the problem, and you cannot control QoS on the internet.
Since you cannot control the inbound data QoS (what traffic the internet is "throwing at you"), you will experience fuzzy and dropped calls if you are using VoIP for your telephone service. Make sure you have some traditional phone lines to fall back on. Then again, this is not the kind of experience you want your customers to have when they're talking to you in the first place.
Big companies love VoIP technology. They can afford to deploy it properly. They can afford the dedicated network connections between their large offices that are required to deliver reliable, "fuzz free" calls. These dedicated connections save a lot of expense for inter-office calling versus having all of the inter-office calls go through the phone company (or Public Switched Telephone Network - PSTN).
If you are using VoIP for interoffice calls (e.g., you have more than one office location and are trying to save some money by linking phone systems with VoIP), you must have a "managed network connection" between your sites. When you have a managed network, you can control the priority of network traffic ensuring the voice packets get the highest priority from end-to-end. Generally, a managed network between offices means a dedicated data connection between offices. VoIP networked PBX'es are great for offices with a hundred employees at each site, and will save them some money. It doesn't make sense for the small business, though.
Simply put, unless you can afford a dedicated data circuits between your office sites, you will experience dropped calls, fuzzy calls, and have other problems.
Buying VoIP? Buy Local! If you are considering a VoIP phone system, you are always better choosing a local vendor. Do not choose an internet reseller. Your local vendor will know who all of the good local internet and SIP providers are - most importantly, they're "within reach" if your new phone system doesn't work as advertised. Most importantly - use an experienced local vendor and always, always check references first!
Do you need a phone system with 50 or fewer telephones? More than likely you'll benefit from a lower total cost of ownership, and greater reliability provided by a traditional telephone system. If you have a few remote workers - or even a dozen - a traditional phone system is likely still a better choice. The phone company solved this problem long ago with call forwarding, Centrex, and other services you can add to your account. Even when you add a few monthly services to your phone bill, a traditional phone system usually costs less in the long run than a VoIP phone system for small business.
Best of all - with a traditional phone system, when you pick up the phone, there's a dial tone. When you press buttons, the call goes through. Once your call is in progress it will stay on and give you no problems, unless of course the other guy has VoIP service or is on a cell phone.
Sorting through the hype, options, and service providers, and hardware vendors - and deciding how and when to go VoIP - is a minefield for any business (Forbes, 8/07).
The truth about internet phone system sales: As dealers, we all earn rebates or get lower pricing when we sell a lot online. The more we sell, the less we pay. Resellers that sell VoIP hardware online make more when they sell VoIP hardware than when they sell traditional hardware. VoIP phone systems are great for equipment resellers dumping equipment on internet consumers. Telephone system vendors make more money when you buy a VoIP phone system.
If you decide to purchase a VoIP phone system from an internet vendor, get a guarantee it will work so you can return it, or be prepared for a fight if it doesn't.
Another reason internet VoIP hardware vendors love selling VoIP hardware - it is easy to blame someone else (even you) when it doesn't work. Let's say your calls are dropping, or fuzz-out, or you're not even getting calls. Your vendor can blame it on your local area network, your internet connection (the "last mile" - your DSL, cable, or fiber connection), or the internet upstream (the internet beyond your walls - the internet you have no control of - the internet that connects the big providers to each other), or your dial tone provider (sometimes called SIP trunk provider).
If you have a traditional phone system, your hardware reseller cannot pass the buck as easily - you simply disconnect your phone system from the phone company's telephone line, and attach an ordinary telephone (or test set), and if you have dial tone, you know the problem is in the phone system. There's no guessing. It's just more reliable.
We sell traditional phone systems to do-it-yourselfers and other professionals through our web store. We do not sell VoIP phone systems over the internet. This was a decision we made since the small VoIP systems and service providers can be quite unreliable. When our customers have problems with their equipment, we do not send them off to the manufacturer for support, we work with our customers every inch of the way. Since VoIP systems tend to be a lot more trouble if not properly installed, we choose not to sell them over the internet.
As soon as we feel VoIP has matured, and QoS issues have been solved, we will carry it in our web store. Right now we agree with Forbes Magazine and feel that it is more hype than value.
Food for thought...
Someone commented to me after reading the draft that I sure included a lot of links about the problems with VoIP in small business. To be even handed, I tried googling things like "phone system problems" and "phone system drawbacks" and "traditional phone system problems" and nearly every article that returned was about problems with VoIP phone systems. Don't believe me, for a laugh, just try it yourself.
Reference Library
Video: Vonage Voice Over IP Review
Are VoIP carriers unreliable?
Fee to cancel unreliable VoIP service is unfair
Video: Number portability problem
VoIP Security Challenges
Is VoIP Reliable?
Hacking VoIP
VoIP Problems
IP Telephony Problems and Challenges
VoIP Cons, Problems and Pitfalls
VoIP System Security: Time to Worry, or Maybe Not
The Top 5 VoIP Security Threats of 2008
Brace Yourself: VoIP Spam Is Coming
Wireless Broadband + VoIP = Problems
Why there's no Internet QoS and likely never will be
QoS Fact or Fiction
Why QOS is Important and QOS Action List
Twitter Updates
* Did you know the makers of the Vertical SBX are closing their warehouse for an Entire Week? Reminder: Reliability is AVAILABILITY. 24 days ago
* Microsoft pulls the plug on Response Point. Expect a lot of new and no-name VoIP companies to fail as well.
https://blogs.technet.com/rp/ 45 days ago
* Want new features for free? Upgrade your firmware.
https://bit.ly/i2K3Y 91 days ago
* Are you using Direct Inward Dial, or are you forcing customers to dial extensions? Get out of the dark ages.
https://tinyurl.com/nec-dsx-did 98 days ago
* VoIP for the NEC DSX is almost upon us!
https://tinyurl.com/necdsxvoip 100 days ago
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