MSYoung

One factor would be less wire to run. VoIP phones use the same cable your computers use. Digital phones require their own cable.

__________________
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Marty

bobmay

Another reason for VOIP is ease of moving phones. When you move staff you can simply unplug the phone and plug in at the new location, and all the station programing, and extension number will remain the same.

gizo

Except that we are gigabit to the desktop, and all the handsets we have been offered are only 10/10 passthrough..

Thanks for the help, though..

papa-bear

Cisco and Nortel have gig phones. don't know about the SIP phones that would work with Astrix.

Another thing with VoIP is your network. You will need to ensure it is robust enough to handle the voice traffic so there could be hidden costs the vendor is not telling you about if you go that route.

Bozman69

Hi all,

We have just made the move over to a VOIP system and let me tell you its so much nicer to administer.

We are a gig network here and using the 1120E and 1140E Nortel IP Phones you retain that speed as they are gig enabled and as for ease of moving users its a piece of cake.

Brad

gizo

Thanks for the Heads-Up about Nortel - I am speaking to their rep later this week. Will be interesting to establish the cost difference between gig IP phones, and running 2 cables to each desktop. Hmmm.

Funk#49

Not the most compelling arguments for a more expensive VoIP system.
Less cabling? Easier to move phones?

We are just starting the consulting process (and I'm not impressed, at all), to replace our old but reliable PBX (2000 users) and so far the real justification is reduced long distance (for us) if we network all of our local remote sites and use our main site as the hub for all long distance.

Cabling? Yea, maybe the CEO will consider that small cost savings, but he will question the overall cost of the VoIP solution, not to mention the network upgrade and WAPs, etc.

Easier MACs? I don't think our CEO would care. Why would he?

I guess we're leaning toward a hybrid system (TDM/VoIP) and our large affiliate has a Nortel system. So, we'll see when all is said and done if our CEO will ultimately approve either a TDM, Hybrid, or entire VoIP solution, or none and just keep what we have.

techy71

Easier to move phones is not just putting them from one desk to another. It's also integrating SIP/GSM mobiles like all the present Nokia Wifi capable phones (E and N series).

I like it to have a full featured PBX extension in my hotel room or airport lobby. Or at home. This might also be interesting for your CEO.

Another interesting feature is locating mobile phones before calling them. Where is staff member XYZ? I don't need to call him. It's fully integrated into our PBX. I just open his webcall page.

I also like to add DIDs from several cities or countries easily. Since the calls come in over VoIP I get get DID from whereever I want.

Funk#49

Good points, although we are a semi-large Health Care Facility where there isn't a lot of travel. I guess the selling points for us would be the ability to eliminate quite a few POTS lines and network all of our remote sites back to our main hub for a reduced long distance access, but we will have to keep some as a backup due to failure.

Our remote sites operate as their own entities basically, not a lot of need to be networked back to the main campus (other than long distance or maybe the occasional extension to extension connection).

The more I'm working on this replacement project the more I would like to see the majority of phones be TDM and just have the ability to play with VoIP on a smaller scale.