My experiences and lessons learned with VoIP

bunking_off

...well I'd complain then. They have a regulatory obligation to provide service through power cuts. If you want to scare the customer service people, cite "General Condition 3", amongst which it says;

"3.1 The Communications Provider shall take all reasonably practicable
steps to maintain, to the greatest extent possible:
(a) the proper and effective functioning of the Public Telephone
Network provided by it at fixed locations at all times, and
(b) in the event of catastrophic network breakdown or in cases of
force majeure the availability of the Public Telephone Network
and Publicly Available Telephone Services provided by it at fixed
locations, and
(c) uninterrupted access to Emergency Organisations as part of any
Publicly Available Telephone Services offered at fixed locations."

As part of their approach of leaving industry to design their own solutions, Ofcom don't now make detailed guidelines available on fulfilling GC3. However, all established telcos simply continue with the "Guidelines on the essential requirements for network security and integrity" that were developed for Oftel. These stated;

"B.7 All single line telephony (‘POTS’) and basic rate ISDN (‘ISDN2’) services must provide for line powering of customer premises equipment (CPE) and, where relevant, the Network Terminating Equipment (NTE) to ensure that access is maintained during any loss of mains power at the customer’s premises. These features must be declared as part of the interface publication requirements of the RVTD and RE&TTED (see licence condition Publication of Interfaces – Condition 15 of the PTO licence and Condition 2 of the Telecommunications Services Licence – see reference 11)."

I know from speaking to their design guys that they do have battery backup in the street cabinets to last for a number of hours, but have had episodes of them being stolen (plus inevitably they deteriorate over time).

BT's architecture is different : the copper pairs terminate on MDFs in your local exchange building. Nowadays they have UPS there, but in the old days they used to have banks & banks of lead acid batteries to provide the backup.

littleange

I still get a dial tone on my cancelled BT line so I'm assuming this is for emergencies only - so keep a corded phone plugged in to that - luckily haven't had to test this yet.

Most people will have a charged mobile phone anyway I'd imagine.

It's not worth paying BT £132 a year just in case you have a power cut and an emergency and your mobile is not charged - always keep your mobile charged instead

patwa_2

Hi.

I'm one of those people that like to be on top of things when it comes to technology, frequently hurting my credit card bill (and my relationship with the bank) to buy gadgets when they hit the market.

I recently bought the Linksys SPA-3102 and now have it configured to divert my calls to my mobile. I have two lines in the house, so calls on both lines are carried over VoIP to my mobile, cutting the standard divert cost charged by my landline provider in half. I am also able to call into my own landline using my mobile or any other phone, and make calls via my landline's free International Calls package.

I have set up PIN numbers on the system, meaning that relatives from abroad can call my SPA via VoIP, then call their own relatives internationally using my line, saving them money and costing me nothing.

I have set up a number of geographical numbers in foreign countries, both in Europe and the US, so that friends and customers can call on numbers that are local to them, and I can either answer them at home or they are diverted to my mobile. I use a number of VoIP providers for this, and they can all be managed from within my own network on the SPA, or else from anywhere on the internet via remote management (with appropriate security protections in place, of course).

Finally, in a month or so's time, I will be setting up a Linux server with Trixbox installed. This will allow me to host my own voicemail, music-on-hold and an interactive menu system, including translations into a number of languages, controllable by the caller. I will also be setting up data input, whereby callers can input information such as their name, phone number, etc, and later on, for my business, their order and payment information. This will all be stored in a database hosted on the server. I will also be writing my own programs to control 'Gateway looping'. This works whereby, when trying to connect a call, the system can first try my own landline, if it's not answered or is busy, my second landline, the my mobile, and any other numbers I specify in turn. Therefore callers are guaranteed to either find myself or someone who can deal with their query, no matter where their actual location.

As you can see, VoIP has a lot of possibilities, and I strongly believe I'm only just scratching the surface. I expect the equipment to more than pay for itself in just a couple of months, and to be absolutely honest I'm rather freaked out by the sheer number of things and services I can implement from my own home.

Oh, and the very last thing I will be implementing is my own Calling Card service. This way, I will charge calls a flat £5 monthly fee, and for that they will get free international calls, as well as calls to mobiles, UK 0845 and 0870 numbers free of charge. Ths will only cost them the price of a local call, which for many now is either free, or costs at most 5-6p in the hour.

Hussein.