Small business phone lines and internet connection

Darlaston

Hi, I work for a small business and we are moving to a new office in a month.

At the moment we have only one phone line and use the internet through a wireless connection.

In the new office we will have up to 6 employees who will all need to make and receive calls and use the internet at the same time. We don't really want a wireless connection as the one we have keeps going wrong.

Are there any suggestions the best way to go about this or the best service to use? Sorry if this sounds like a stupid questions but I know nothing about this at all and my manager has asked me to find out!

Petmidget

Take a look at VOIP, there are new products utilising it meaning you can wrap in a switchboard, multiple lines and BB connection for a fraction of the cost of doing it traditionally. https://www.engenie.co.uk provide this kind of thing, thats not a recommendation I just happen to have heard of them.

Wireless is probably not a good idea for that many people as bandwidth is restricted using Wifi.

fguk

Firstly, in the new offices, make sure everyone is wired into a network switch, which is in turn wired into a router for the internet. A switch for 8 users wont cost more than £50, and the router you can get for not a lot with your internet contract. That solves the wireless thing.

Now for phone calls, as mentioned, you should try VOIP. Take a look at https://www.gradwell.co.uk. They can provide you a virtual phone system that works over the internet, so everyone can have phones, you can transfer calls, but you dont need 6 separate BT lines.

The thing with VOIP is it uses your broadband connection and may only handle 3-4 phone calls at a time, and that doesnt take account of people using the internet and sending emails. But worst case is you may need to have two BT lines and two broadband connections. Much cheaper than 6 BT lines and works better.

Gradwell are good, and very helpful, get in touch with them for more detailed advice.

(I am a customer of theirs, I do NOT work for them).

Savvy_Sue

the only thing I'd say about VOIP (and admittedly I've only used Skype and Jajah) is that reception is not always as clear as on a conventional phone line. Sometimes this doesn't matter to much, but it can be inconvenient and frustrating.

If you go for conventional landlines, look at whatever Telewest are offering - or are they NTL or Virgin these days? Anyway, we use their Centrex system, and find it very good: basically the convenience of a switchboard without the kit. If one line's busy it goes to another, calls transferred from any phone to any other, voicemail etc etc etc.

But we still have a BT line for our Broadband, because when we first had BB Telewest weren't offering an economic package.

Darlaston

Thanks for all your replies. I am a bit unsure about using VOIP especially if it if difficult to be making/receiving calls and using email at the same time.

The company I work for is a recruitment company so there will always be people on the phone/internet/email at once.

I called BT and they recommended getting 'featurelines' which means we can have up to 6 lines. We pay £45.95 per quarter line rental on each line, it is £85 to install each line and we get broadband for £26.99 per month for the whole office.

I have no idea if this is expensive or not! Are there any companies who can undercut BT but offer the same service?

ukbill69

Feature line is good, with some great features over normal line. Every big business runs there phones through the internet, becuase its free.

Savvy_Sue

Darlaston wrote:

I called BT and they recommended getting 'featurelines' which means we can have up to 6 lines. We pay £45.95 per quarter line rental on each line, it is £85 to install each line and we get broadband for £26.99 per month for the whole office.

I have no idea if this is expensive or not! Are there any companies who can undercut BT but offer the same service?

Well, look at the Centrex system offered by whoever used to be Telewest ...

It's only £50 to instal each line. Line rental is £15 per month. And I think their call charges are slightly lower. The downside is that you won't be able to take advantage of all the offers of cheaper calls if you're not using a BT line. Still, it's a quick way of getting rid of the salespeople ...

You may still need a BT line for Broadband. Don't know how Telewest compares for that.

But if your business is phone-critical, I wouldn't yet say VOIP is robust enough - OK I'm not the most experienced user of it, and I do have a hearing loss, BUT when using Skype people regularly complained about not being able to hear me and vice versa. There was always a time lag as well ...

Also, our internet's been down at work for two days. This is the second time this year. Maybe it's time to change our Internet provider, but if we'd been relying on that for phone calls as well, we'd have been stuffed.

The only thing I can reassure you about is that VOIP doesn't seem to interfere with email or other internet use! At least it didn't for us.

fguk

@Savvy_Sue, slightly off topic, but worth a comment I think.

I find VOIP almost 100% reliable, depending, as you mentioned on your broadband working.

VOIP is interfered with by internet and email use, usually by the quality of the call disappearing down the drain, the time lag increasing, or even not being able to make calls at all (which is what you report with Skype). I also find that using a proper handset for your VOIP and not using softphones (the way most people use Skype) helps enormously.

@Darlaston

The Centrex deal with NTL/Telewest/Virgin Media looks good.

Savvy_Sue

Thanks, I confess I'm not techie enough to know what I'm doing all the time, and I also have little control over what my colleagues are getting up to!

We did have proper VOIP handsets rather than using microphones and speakers (which were hopeless). And I did TRY using something which was supposed to make VOIP work with a 'normal' telephone handset, but gave up. It was just too complicated.

Jajah is fine for quality generally, but the problems start when the other line is engaged: you don't get a conventional 'engaged' tone, just a message that the call has failed. You don't know if that's because the line was engaged or unobtainable (you might have the wrong number!) OR - and I'm sure this sometimes happens - it just won't accept your call. I know some systems are set up to reject either unidentified or 'foreign' calls, and the way we use Jajah that's how ours look. Yes, I know there are ways round this, but for the amount we use it, it hasn't seemed worth exploring them ...

And sometimes Jajah just doesn't work for a day or more.

And of course it doesn't work at all - and nor will any VOIP service - when your internet connection goes down. As ours did last Thursday, and we only got it back again late today: the router had died ...

Back on topic for the OP: someone who knows more about these things than I do says the Centrex deal looks good. If there is any other alternative to BT's featureline I've yet to hear about it, and to me it's always beaten Featureline easily.