Besides saving money on toll calls, what are the advantages to VOIP? I have seen commercials about VOIP, usually voice over DSL, but have yet to hear anything concrete about other advantages.

Well, sometimes there are none. For business use, it allows you network sites together by dynamically using your existing data network. It allows you to run a single wire to the desk - no big deal for existing sites. I am not sure if this is good or not, but it tends to put more control of operations on the data team. For home use, it sometimes offers a cheaper local access line with some additional features. Overall, it is the future but it has some growing pains to go through.

They can be helpful for a traveling person. Lots of places now have internet access and you can plug into your phone system while out of town. Or working from home.

They can be great to the right business or a big waste of money!!(Overkill and never used)

I think you must clarify "saving on tolls"
The general user is under the impression that VOIP means free phone calls. This is NOT true!

Using a service provider like Vonage and others WILL save you on your phone bill as a residential user because you can get unlimited calling plans for $30 a moth including all charges. As opposed to Verizon who charges you $35+ just for dial tone. However you must have at least DSL/Cable internet service minimum for a single line. To date this service is schetchy at best;

Problems -
False dusy signals all the time. While this has improved (I've had vonage for over a year as an experimental/spare line for the kids) it is still a frequent accurance. What happens is when you dial a number you get a busy signal that does not come from the number dialed but from Vonage at their gateway where they trasfer your call from their network the the PSTN.

If your internet is down you don't have phones. This is a major issue if you expect to get to 911 (which even when you sign up does not connect you to local 911)

If you have someone on the web and you want to make a call at teh same time expect rather poor quality sound and freqent drops even if you configure UPnP properly.

For ANY business this is NOT an option. I know that vonage does ship any ATA with more than 2 ports. If you want more than 4-5 lines expect to have to get a T1 just for your voice services. And still face unreliable service.

The only place the VOIP makes any sense is in tying multiple FIXED locations together.
You have HQ office a, b or telecommuting employees with a low volume of transfers (less than 20% of max bandwidth at peak).

As for the future? Still only about 40% of US households have internet access at all and only about 15% have dsl.

Copper is here to stay for at least the next 20-40 years.

You're absolutely correct. There IS a difference between voice over IP and voice over broadband. The olympics has a marketing campaign by Call Vantage which starts out the ad by saying how voice and data are converging, and that there are MANY reasons that VOIP is great. But, they only mention one reason-cost savings.
I am looking for ways to bring VOIP to my small/medium business customers, hence am looking for advantages for them to use it.

I have worked wirh VOIP with large corporations, and can give you reasons why it doesn't work good as long as my arm; it's new. The only advantage I saw with VOIP was when the company had global offices, it could install the VOIP system and call over its existing data network toll free all over the world.

Yes, voice over broadband is different. Without getting too technical, there are many forms of transmitting voice packets over data networks- Voice over IP, TCP/IP, Frame-Relay, and broadbhand. Voice over broadband is the cheapest and most available solution to the residence or small business at present. Since one is paying for access to the broadband company's gateways, the tolls would be according to the company's pricing and location of the gateways.

Voip (all types) still has many problems -jitter, fading, packet loss, but the bottom line as I have witnessed about VOIP is- people are fascinated by the new technology but it is not yet affordable or reliable. Networks crash, and are nowhere near as stable as telephone systems traditionally are.
People are used to networks crashing, but when it comes to phones, they say "I need to make a call-right now. where's my dial tone?" They don't understand or want to hear- "The phones are down because the networks are down." I've heard many times- Just give me my old analog set that always works. I need to make a call!" 911 is the most important example of this.
The users end up with two phones on their desk. I have seen this almost every where I have seen a VOIP system.

Eventually this wil change as VOIP gets more reliable. Meanwhile, I am supporting it but watching for ways my customers (and I) can use it to their bestv advantage.

whew!
sorry I was so long-winded, everybody.
But it WAS my 100th "anniversary post"!

on the same subject
just got a call from a customer(high school) that has subcribed to a "voip provider" and they want to interface their "voip box" to an existing phone system via an analog(2500 style circuit card). other then maybe voltage issues( in theory it should give multiple phones access to the service.
anyone have any views and/or experience in a similar situation?
m

I've seen a similar setup, where a school did this themselves with an Avaya Partner system. They thought they would have access to multiple phones, multiple lines. From what I could tell, they ended up using the common TR from the key system,so only one line at a time could be used. Once a line was used at a station, noone else could access any line or any other station.

More specific information would be needed to make a more qualified guess.

Martin,
I have the same setup in my office. It's as simple as you stated. Just connect the output from the VoIP ATA to an open CO port on the KSU and program accordingly.
Larry

thanks for the input.

Martin, I ahve done the same thing at home. I have a Vonage box providing my dial tone into a Toshiba DK40. Works great. Saves me lots of money over Verizon.

see MCK.com. Great for connecting multiple sites or extending across the street with radio bridge or other WAN environment.
Extends the actual keyset.

I have 3 questions to help me understand this better-
-when using the CO port to the ksu, can you access the ksu's multiple lines?
-Do the lines ring?
-Can other stations see if someone is on a line?

it just gets better. talked to the tech guy for the isd.
he is looking for and e&m tie line circuit.

They want an E&M card for the VoIP? What for?

VoIP is really great assuming that the bandwidth is large enough. In our small office, if someone sends a large email, that email will gobble up ALL of the upload bandwidth. I can hear the other person, but they cannot hear me. We opted for an additional DSL line exclusively for VoIP instead of getting a data router that prioritizes voice packets.

basic form:
send a single line station port from site a to site b via VOIP. Send s/l port from site b to a.
At the far end they plug into the ksu co port.
To use. At site B pick up the co line from site A, get dial tone from site A, dial page code and page or dial ext number, or dial outside line code to make local call at site A. Incoming caller at site B need to transfer to site A, transfer to the ext fed to site A.
Multi tech VOIP units also have E&M circuits
built in w/fxs-fxo. Check out Multi Tech VPN Route Finder routers.

I have installed e&m trunks from Avaya Key/PBX systems to cisco routers and tied to other systems. Have many out there and use both PTP and frame-relay. Works great but you must use QOS if you expect lots of voice traffic. Jitter can be a problem with low bandwith overhead. Stick with dial peers passing all the digits between systems. I have had good results with fax's also.

If you have the capablity of setting up hunt groups, its not so bad. Just setup three trks and have two or three #'s hunt to each trk and that should take care of your problem.