ForumsTechnology Management

I have replaced a much more costly traditional business land line with a Vonage line. I did it'
hesitantly since I have heard from some people who went VoIP, hated it, and switched back.
Personally, I have no problem with it. The features are great, the cost saving is exceptional, and
to boot I can now make calls to Canada without getting fleeced. I must admit the voice quality isn't always
100% up to par with a land line, but it is more than acceptable.

Cons: I don't think it will work with either our fax or alarm setup. Plus, as anyone with internet connection knows, there IS occasional down time (but there are buttons and whistles included that largly resolve these issues). For these reasons, we still maintain a land-line phone as well.

I can't comment on multi-line Merlin and similar setups since I have no knowledge on that subject.
Beyond that, I am a fan of VoIP.

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We are a small business IT consulting company and for the
past 3 years have sold VOIP and PBX systems. I think VOIP is great. VOIP services are getting better but one should always
have at least one land line. You may want to look at the new Microsoft Response
Point VOIP system http://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint/
It has a lot of
features that the big companies have i.e. Nortel but for half the price. With
the T1 you can get both VOIP and internet together.
Hope this is of some help.

Chris Castillo
CwCastle Associates |
http://www.cwcastle.com |

We use a Cisco Unified Communication solution for our small business. We have a few IP phones and 4 SIP VOIP trunks. I like the system because it gives us full PBX and unified communication in on box. It has auto-attendant feature which allows us to record prompts so that the caller can get to the person they need to talk to (we do not have a receptionist yet). I can VPN to my office from my laptop and use a softphone loaded on my laptop to make/receive calls just as if i was there. We also have cameras at every computer so we can video conference if necessary. Our phone system also integrates with our computer system so we get an e-mail of each voicemail that is left on the system. We can also right-click on a contact on our outlook contacts or any number and start a call on our phone. The system is so flexible and has so much potential. If we desired we could add special applications that integrate with the phones such as recording calls, time card management, patient management for doctors offices, etc.. There was an initial investment but the total cost of ownership is much cheaper than paying a phone company to provide those features. Plus the system is ours and it will grow with us. I am out of the office a lot and this system allows me to take my office with me.

Terran Jones

I would like to suggest you to try miniSipServer. It is a VOIP server for windows platform and it is very easy.

There is a simple document to guide how to establish a voip network for small business.

http://www.myvoipapp.com/minisipserver/faq/setup_ippbx_for_small_business_step_by_step/index.html