Converting to POS

[H. Dewey Norton]

[Michael Martin]

A couple of Observations:

1) POS to me means at least 2 things -- 1 is a "Point of Sale" terminal (think cash register in a store) or 2 -- a derogatory term (I wont go there).  I've heard the term "POTS" (Plain ol' Telephone Service) which refers to the ANALOG lines - non trunked, single lines.

2) Going into a VoIP environment, there are a lot of benfits -- but it also may require some changes.  If you are expecting to "trunk" several lines into your business (call one number, can be routed to several different lines inside the office, etc) what you may want to look into is a VoIP oriented PBX (something like http://www.asterisk.org/ ).  I would suggest that you get a "professional" who has expereince in VoIP traffic and PBX's and the like to get involved.  Maybe Vonage can suggest a local expert / vendor to help out.  This also may affect your broadband capability needs.  More than likely, you may have to switch out PBX equipment for more VoIP friendly equipment.

3) I would do this in "measured steps" .. especially for service crossover processes.  like:
   a) Get one or two Vonage lines in, get a PBX running, and get used to the operation of the service
   b) schedule a cutover from the BS lines to the VoIP lines.
   c) ensure the VoIP lines are working, cut the BS lines.
   d) make sure you have an alternate method to get to voicemails just in case things hit the wall (like have a copy of all voicemails go to an email account that you can run out to a WIFI hotspot and retrive -- and then return calls with a cell phone .)

I've recently been invovled in getting a company (50 folks) moved over to VoIP using Cisco equipment.  It's very cool, and I wished I paid more attention to what went on.  I can tell you that the company in Augusta talked A LOT to the parent company in Sweden.  Moving to VoIP saved them a BUTTLOAD in call costs.  But there was some significant investment on the front end to get things running.

good luck and keep us posted.  VoIP is definitely the future of voice telephony.

Mike

PS -- a Google of "Asterisk Vonage" turned up a BLOOM of articles.  Check it out

[H. Dewey Norton]

The woman at Vonage referred to it as POS, but now that you mention it, I've also seen POTS. Although we've had the capability with the Toshiba system, it turns out that we don't really need to transfer calls within the office (it's such a small space that we just put a caller on "Hold" and tell the other person to pick up). The system probably has other capabilities as well, but we simply don't use them.

With Vonage, I found out that you can't have more than two phone lines coming out of one of the little routers they provide and if you want two phones in different parts of an office, you have to run phone extension lines along the walls to that single router which can be quite messy. I had a LOOOOOOOOOOONG conversation with a different Vonage tech support person back in April (who was probably off in India or Malaysia) getting that point clarified. We finally decided that we'd just have to get one router per phone and plan to keep each phone with a computer (one of their "free" routers also has an ethernet jack so you can plug in a computer). Each "business" plan also gives the ability to plug in a fax (seems like at no additional charge) so I've decided which phone is also going to have the fax machine sitting on that same table.

One router per phone is not the most elegant solution, but it DOES have an added advantage which we're very probably going to use. With an internet phone, you can plug it into any high-speed internet connection anywhere in the world, let it set itself up, and if anyone calls you at that number (i.e., the phone number assigned to that Vonage router), it will ring there where the router is (which is why Vonage makes such a big deal about your making sure that you contact them to update the address anytime you move the phone in case anyone uses it to call 911). Money is now so tight that my boss has decided to close the office and have everyone work from home (no, I'm not thrilled, but it's better than unemployment). Not all of us have high-speed internet connections at home; the company will simply have to provide and pay for a Comcast line for those of us who don't, but it'll still be cheaper than BellSouth's service and from the standpoint of anyone who calls us, there'll be no difference.

My big concern is the transition period. The last time we converted from one conventional phone service to our present conventional phone system, it took at least one month for our "professional" installer to get BellSouth to pay any attention to their mega-screw-ups. When I saw that warning at the Vonage site about potential problems, everything ground to a halt. I may go by Radio Shack and see what they have to be able to hook into the phone panel, in case the Toshiba system makes it impossible for any phones beyond it to ring after changing to POS or POTS. Another alternative would be to simply get the new service from Vonage up and running using whatever phone numbers they want to assign, pay BellSouth to forward all our numbers to the Vonage numbers, THEN have Vonage take the numbers (but I REALLY hate dealing with BellSouth; they've NEVER gotten anything right on the first, second, or third attempts).