We are a company of 10 people and planning to expand to 16 people in a year. Currently, we signed up with a communication company for Avaya Voice T1 system for 17 phones (around $15K) about a month ago. A month has passed and they said that they couldn't get it in on time because "Verizon" couldn't give them the T1 signal on time. They said it normally took a few months to get the signal. This is just for the voice and cabling. Now, they suggest that we should go with Cisco VoIP instead. [Note: they only carry Avaya POTS/Voice T1 and Cisco VoIP.) The installation cost [phones + cabling + routers] comes out to be about the same $14K. The monthly charge for VoIP system is like $450 for primary voice + $225 for maintainance like [software upgrades, move and add (I don't know what this is), and etc.. ]. Each phone will add additional $30 for the additional plan. For the size of our company, I think VoIP monthly fixed cost is about the same as Voice T1 fixed cost. The variable cost of VoIP may be cheaper by $15 a person. This is totally against what I have heard which is VoIP is
a lot cheaper than other traditional solutions. Please let me know if our quote is reasonable. Just to make sure that we are not being ripped off.
Plus, if you don't mind, could you please give us some suggestion on companies (or even your company) that I can talk to in New York City area? I prefer Voice T1 (but seem like no one can install that for us in 2 weeks) quality but I don't mind looking at high quality VoIP solutions. I really need a solution soon. Please help.
[Additional Questions]
1. We would like to have a phone in conference room. However, having VoIP is like a waste because we don't use it so often and it doesn't make any sense for us to get a plan for that phone. Are there any solution to this (e.g. 2 physical phones connecting to the same line)?
2. What are the maintainance cost? Why do we need to pay that much monthly if VoIP phone is so good?
3. Why does it take so long for Verizon to get the signal?
Thank you,
--tedro