Phone Line and Broadband for a Charity

dolan46

I am trying to find the best deal for our village hall to have a phone line installed (there's none at the moment) and broadband. We are a registered charity. Does anyone have experience of this or have any useful information?
Thanks
Graham

Savvy_Sue

If you are members of NCVO, it may be worth seeing if they've got any special 'deals' on, and if you're not members of NCVO it may be worth joining for the deals ...

Beyond that, look at this, which links to Martin's article on business telecomms.

The big question is to consider how you're going to limit / monitor useage. Will you have a payphone installed? keep the phone locked in the office? or increase your charges to cover 'abuse'?

As for broadband, I'd say consider what you need it for: a mobile dongle may be all you need for occasional use, but if you're planning on installing multiple computers and running classes or a cyber-cafe that probably isn't the answer! So maybe say what your intentions are so we can help a little better.

wonka

If you do purchase broadband, you could install a VOIP solution, similar to Skype. This would work out to be cheaper than a fixed phone line.

With VOIP, you could still have a handset, and don't need to have a PC switched on when using it. It would simply connect directly to the broadband router. You could also have more than one handset. Take a look at http://www.sipgate.co.uk/