Things to Think About Before
Ordering VoIP
-------------------------------
UPDATE:
In mid-July, 2007, Sunrocket, a VoIP provider with around
200,000 subscribers, permanently closed their doors and turned off
their system. This left everybody with a Sunrocket phone
number (including us), or a number that was ported to Sunrocket
from a real phone company, with NO PHONE SERVICE. Fast busy
when you call it, and you can't dial out.
If
this was the only phone service a business had, they'd be in big
trouble
They would have to get new phone service, and hope
they can port the number they had with Sunrocket to the new
service - which would probably take a few days or more.
We used a single Sunrocket number with a Linksys ATA for
testing. I noticed that they often didn't bill us for service (we
only made a few calls a month with it). I wonder if that has
something to do with them going away?
A little farther down in
this Tech Bulletin, I mention Norvergence, who also disappeared
one day, leaving their subscribers with a package of local phone
service, long distance, Internet access, and even Nextel cell
phones with no communications.
I'm
not telling you this to scare you away from using VoIP
It's here to give you a
sense of the current reality of the phone business. Make your
decisions so you have a Plan B, and don't put all your eggs in one
basket. Like I say numerous times in this Tech Bulletin,
just because someone calls themselves a Phone Company, doesn't
mean they will always be here like your local Phone Company - who
is a utility that essentially can't go out of business (they just
keep wasting money, and raising rates to make up for it!).
One other word of
warning: You know you have to be very careful ordering
anything on the Internet, but here's an example of what I saw when
I tried to order a couple of VoIP ATAs to replace the Sunrocket
ATA we used for testing:
The $79.95
magically becomes $132.85 when you go to checkout:
It turns
out that Technical Support and a 1 year guarantee is automatically
added to the checkout (for over $50!), with no apparent way to
remove it. As you can guess, I didn't order these from this
company. In this busy world, it's easy for a company to use
"bait and switch" like this. They almost got me. Keep it
in mind as you travel the Internet!
By the way,
when I called the company to mention their price discrepancies,
they said "Their customers prefer it that way." I forgot
to take my Stupid Pills that day, or I would have believed
him.
-------------------------------
If you're
thinking of getting VoIP to save money, do a little research before
ordering it. It could save you several bottles of Tums, some hard cash,
and some lost business.
If you're
thinking of getting VoIP because your business has
multiple locations, that's where VoIP really shines today - but you
still have
to do your homework. Like any business with multiple locations using a
central
PBX or Centrex, you have to be very careful in dealing with 911. If you
screw up
and 911 doesn't work correctly from one of the locations and someone
dies, your
job and your whole business are at stake.
Because our company sells all kinds of gizmos to fix strange telephone
problems, we hear about an incredible number of problems implementing
VoIP, T1 and even POTS lines from CLECs (Competitive Local
Exchange Carrier) every week. We also hear lots of problems with POTS
lines from
real Phone Companies, but they're easier to solve. VoIP can save money
and/or
help your business run better, but you should dip your toe in first to
see what
it's like!
Look
BEFORE You Dive Into VoIP!

People who buy phone equipment today assume that the stuff is
dependable, mainly because phones and phone service has been pretty
dependable in the past. Not
now.
People who get phone lines from a company who says
they're a Phone Company assume that the phone lines they're ordering
will work as well as the ones they've gotten from their local Phone
Company. Afraid
not.
Just because someone is selling you a telephone device or telephone
service doesn't mean it will actually work, especially when it's
connected to a particular piece of equipment. In the old days, all
telephone equipment was essentially compatible. These days, there's
some chance that it just won't work in your application - and you don't
find out until after you've
spent a lot of money on new equipment that won't work right, or you
can't make or receive phone calls... and you're losing business.
VoIP lines
generally don't work with alarm equipment, modems, credit card
authorization terminals, or satellite/cable set-top boxes. Faxes often
don't work well on a VoIP line. VoIP stuff and T1s generally don't work
when the power goes out (a UPS will help until it runs down). When you
order a VoIP line, there's usually nobody to tell you the things to
check for - you find out after you install it and it doesn't work.
After that, tech support from some third world country is useless. All
of these can cause some pretty big problems if you get rid of your
regular phone lines before doing your homework.
NEVER EVER EVER EVER GET A BUSINESS PHONE NUMBER FROM A VoIP
PROVIDER!
The phone
numbers that most VoIP providers will give you are a special breed of
number. They won't belong to you, and you can't keep them if you switch
VoIP providers or go back to the Phone Company for real lines. The
numbers don't even belong to the VoIP provider. VoIP providers needed a
way to get local phone numbers throughout the country quickly, so they
could become a "national" phone company. Most actually "rent" these
phone numbers from companies who are in the business
of renting blocks of phone numbers.
The local phone
number "rental" business started up in the mid 90's with the popularity
of the Web. The ISPs (Internet Service Providers) that offered
dial-up service needed a local phone
number just about everywhere, since nobody wanted to pay big bucks to
the phone company for a toll call to surf the Web for hours. Just as
broadband was killing the dial-up ISPs a couple of years ago (fewer
local phone numbers were needed to dial into the Internet), VoIP
companies came along needing phone numbers in virtually every city in
America. They went ahead and rented blocks of these numbers everywhere,
and became overnight "national" phone companies.
Imagine the
surprise you'll get if you publish the VoIP phone number you get, and
later decide you could get a better deal somewhere else, or try to go
back to a real Phone Company because of quality issues. You'll never be
able to use that number with another phone company, and if that VoIP
provider goes out of business, you may not be able to get that number
from any other VoIP company (they may deal with a different phone
number rental company). If you need a new phone number and you really
want to use VoIP service, get a line installed from the Phone Company,
and then get it ported to the
VoIP provider (and disconnect the Phone Company line). If you have
multiple lines that hunt, you really only need to port over the
main number that you publish.
If the VoIP provider promises you that the
phone number will be yours to keep forever, they're not telling the truth. If
the company they're renting the phone number from gets out of the business, or
goes out of business, and the number can't be ported, you'll lose
the number forever. It's impossible for anybody except the real phone company to
promise you that you'll have the number forever, and even then you could lose
the phone number in rare cases.
Once you port a
number away from the Phone Company, you may no longer be listed
in the White Pages or Information, and you may have a problem getting
into the local Phone Company's Yellow Pages?
I personally
would never port our incoming local numbers, since our company would be
out of business without them. We don't use 800 numbers at our company
because it's possible to have the number hijacked by an 800 service
provider. While this doesn't happen often, it's possible that the 800
number you've used for many years could be taken away from you and
given to another company. You don't own an 800 number, and many
of the 800 service providers have been through bankruptcies.
While a real
Phone Company (a Public Utility) won't disappear into the night, a VoIP
provider or CLEC could close their doors leaving you high and dry. The
most publicized case was Norvergence (besides Sunrocket mentioned earlier), who offered customers local and
long distance, 800 service, Internet, and cell phones on one low
monthly bill - until everything stopped working one day because
Norvergence didn't pay their vendors (look up the sad story on Google).
That left over 10,000 businesses with no way to communicate, scrambling
to get back into business. I should have bought stock in Tums that day!
Let me stress
this again...
NEVER EVER EVER EVER GET A BUSINESS PHONE NUMBER FROM A VoIP
PROVIDER!
If your
dial tone is coming from some kind of box (instead of a line from the
Phone Company), and you're using something other than an old fashioned
single line phone to make and receive calls, you may have problems that
you didn't have when you were using POTS lines (Plain Old Telephone
Service) from the Phone Company.
VoIP phone lines were originally used to make outgoing
calls cheaply - mainly from home with a regular
single line phone or using a headset attached to a computer. While the
quality wasn't as good as the real Phone Company, the savings,
particularly on International calls, were substantial enough to put up
with the quality issues. The savings on outbound International calls
was even more significant for business.
Because VoIP worked well for outgoing calls, companies started to use
it for incoming calls - which was the start of the problems. Some of
the VoIP phone companies started offering unique features on incoming
calls like inexpensive 800 service, foreign exchange (phone numbers
from multiple cities ringing in to a single VoIP device), and external
call transfer. These features make it very attractive to just go ahead
and switch to VoIP, but
just because a VoIP provider says their features work doesn't mean
they'll work in your
application. If you don't do your homework, I'd start buying those Tums
at the warehouse club.
Companies
start using VoIP lines for incoming calls, and find that it doesn't
work with their particular phones or phone system (but it works OK with
a standard single line telephone).
The reason that
most companies consider VoIP is simply saving money. You can get almost
all of the features that VoIP service offers, but it will cost you a
lot more from a real Phone Company. I hear the craziest stuff from
companies who have switched to VoIP without doing their homework, and
are in deep stuff - looking for a solution to get them out of the hole
they dug for themselves.

Here's
a typical conversation:
CALLER: Hello. I'm having trouble with
my phones since I switched from the ABC Phone Company to XYZ VoIP
service. I've called XYZ, and they say their VoIP lines are fine. It
must be my phone equipment. My phone equipment vendor checked the
system, and said it's fine, especially since it worked OK last week
with the Phone Company Lines.
MIKE: OK, what kind of problem are you
having?
CALLER: When someone calls, there's
nobody there when I answer the line. If the caller calls a second time,
sometimes I can answer it and I hear them, but I can always answer it
and hear them when they call back a third time.
MIKE: Sounds like you should switch
back to the ABC Phone Company.
CALLER: Oh no. I would never do that.
XYZ VoIP is only $199 a year per line, with unlimited local and long
distance calling.
Here's
another typical conversation:
CALLER: Hello. I just replaced my
three phone lines with lines from ABC VoIP service a few days ago.
Since then, I can make outgoing calls fine, but when someone calls
here, the call is answered by the Automated Attendant on our Toshiba
phone system, the caller hears a click, and the call is dropped. Once I
figured it out, I turned off the Automated Attendant, but I really need
it to answer the lines. We can't always get to them ourselves.
MIKE: What happens if you answer the
VoIP lines with a regular single line phone plugged directly into the
VoIP box?
CALLER: It works fine.
MIKE: Is your Automated Attendant
plugged into single line analog station ports, or is it integrated into
your phone system digitally?
CALLER: It's on analog station ports.
MIKE: Then unplug the Automated
Attendant and plug the regular single line phone into the analog
station port, and see if the phone rings - and you can answer and talk.
CALLER: OK, I just did that and the
phone rings and I can answer an incoming call and talk just fine.
MIKE: There seems to be something on
the VoIP line that makes your phone system think that the line has hung
up as soon as it's answered. There may be an extra CPC (Calling Party
Control) signal coming from the VoIP box as the line is answered, which
is detected by your phone system, which then sends in-band signaling
(like a DTMF D tone) to the analog station port to tell it to hang-up.
You're going to have to call your phone system vendor to figure it out,
or switch back to lines from the phone company.
CALLER: I can't switch back to the
phone company. I'm saving $100 a month with the VoIP lines!
And
another typical conversation:
CALLER: My customer is a doctor's
office with a small Panasonic phone system. They just switched to
Eggplant Phone Service (not their real name), a CLEC in our area. Since
they switched, every time the customer hangs-up from a conversation,
the phones ring back right away. They answer the line, and there's
nobody there. They hang-up, and the call rings in again. I replaced the
KSU, but it's still doing it. I took all of the readings on the
Telephone Line Diagnostic Table on your web site, and they
were all OK except one.
MIKE: What were the readings?
CALLER: The On-Hook AC voltage from
Tip to Ring was 106VAC.
MIKE: 106 Volts? Is it a really cheap
meter?
CALLER: No, it's a Fluke. I checked my
meter by checking an AC outlet, and it seems OK.
MIKE: That's really strange, but it
explains why you'd be getting false ringing. Regular ringing is only
90VAC, so the phone system should see the 106VAC as ringing, which it
does! There should be less than half a volt of AC on the line.
CALLER: What can I do to fix the
problem?
MIKE: Luckily, phone company specs say
that the phone company has to reduce the AC on the line if it's above
50VAC, which is because anything higher would be dangerous to a phone
man working on the lines (not because the phones or a phone system
wouldn't work right). You just have to call Eggplant and tell them you
measured 106VAC on the line from tip to ring, and they need to bring it
down.
CALLER: I called Eggplant, but I can't
get anybody to call me back. I told the customer to switch back to the
Phone Company so I can talk to repair, but he said he's saving too much
money to do that.
MIKE: You can take a look at our
Longitudinal Imbalance Tech Bulletin where we list the name
of a company who makes gizmos to reduce the AC on a phone line. It
might be expensive, especially since it's really Eggplant's job to
reduce the AC.
Here's one more typical conversation:
CALLER:
We're getting our incoming 800 service, our local phone service, and
our Internet from one company who installed a box that lets us
dynamically share a T1 between voice and the Internet. For the past six
months, we've been getting calls that ring once,
and when we answer the line, there's nobody there. Our customers keep
telling us that they've been trying to call us, but the line rings
once, they hear a click, and that's it. They finally reach us later in
the day, but I think we're losing business. We didn't have this problem
before we switched to ABC Telephone Company.
MIKE:
Do you have the T1 going directly into your phone system, or do you
have a Channel Bank that breaks the T1 out into separate analog lines
that go into your phone system?
CALLER:
We have a Channel Bank in-front of our Panasonic key system.
MIKE:
It could be a problem in your phone system, or with ABC Telephone
Company. Did you call your phone system vendor and ABC?
CALLER:
I called both of them, but they both say their equipment is OK.
MIKE:
The easiest way to determine what's broken is to bridge regular single
line phones onto the lines in-front of your phone system. They will
ring at the same time as the phone system does. When you notice the
problem start happening, answer the call on the single line phone to
see if someone is there. If there's always someone there on the single
line phone, but they're not always there when you answer on your phone
system, your phone system is probably broken or not compatible with
your Channel Bank. If there's nobody there when you answer the single
line phone, the problem is with ABC Telephone Company. You may have a
bad Channel Bank, it might be programmed wrong, or they may have a
problem with the programming on the T1 or a problem in their CO switch.
They should be able to figure it out right away by connecting a data
scope to one of the lines in the CO, and watching the data as the bad
calls come in to you.

This
is happening many times a day all over the country.
Just because a VoIP provider or CLEC says they have a feature doesn't
mean it will work the way you expect, work the way it did from the real
Phone Company, or that you'll be able to get any support if it doesn't
work.
Just
because you can buy a phone or phone system, doesn't mean you will be
able to make all of the features work. Some of the worst offenders are
the expensive "phone systems" they sell at the Office Biggie store.
They have four line corded or cordless "systems" with tons of features,
but there's a pretty good chance all of the features won't work right.
Sometimes they'll work OK on a real phone line, but when used with a
VoIP phone line from a box a lot of features don't work (these types of
phones usually communicate on frequencies over the normal voice range,
on Line 1). If you buy this stuff, make sure you save the boxes and can
return it. A lot of companies thought they could save money by getting
this stuff, ended up buying a real phone system, and then sold the
expensive junk on ebay (or it's still sitting in a corner of the
office).
VoIP
phone systems can be a real surprise. Some features which both users
and Interconnects take for granted on a regular phone system are
missing or crippled on IP phone systems. I got an email from an
Interconnect who was surprised to learn that All-Call Page on the VoIP
system they just installed didn't quite work the way it did on most
other phone systems - it would page a maximum of three phones. They
wanted a good way of getting paging to the other 97 phones they had
just installed. Even if a VoIP phone system vendor says they have a
feature, it might not be implemented at all (in the current release),
it might only be partially implemented, or it might just plain not work
right. Will the manufacturer fix the problem? Eventually, but maybe not
in time to keep the customer happy.
Most
VoIP sets require power to work, either from a power cube at the desk
or using PoE (Power Over Ethernet). PoE may be difficult
and/or expensive to implement, especially if the customer has
a CAT6 (Gigabit) network, which uses all four pairs for data, rather
than just the two pairs for CAT5e. On CAT5e, you would use one of the
spare pairs to provide power to the phone over the Ethernet wiring,
from a central power supply near the patch panel. With CAT6, since
there are no spare pairs, the customer will have to upgrade their
Ethernet Switches to newer ones that provide PoE. The power to run the
phone comes right from the Switch, and it's a very neat installation.
Everybody should probably buy Switches that provide QOS (Quality of
Service priority for VoIP packets) and PoE for any VoIP sets they may
buy in the future - even if they don't need it right now.
Some
businesses feel compelled to use the all of the features on their
new phone system. Everybody wants to get their money's worth
from a purchase, but using features just because they're there
is not a good business practice. I've had customers actually put
their company out of business because they had
to use their expensive new Automated Attendant and Voice Mail - when
the main thing the company did was sales over the phone. If you give
employees the ability to hide behind technology, many will take the
opportunity. Unfortunately, that translates to the bottom line when
sales start going to other companies who don't hide behind technology,
and eventually everybody at the company loses their job when the
company goes under. I'm still amazed when I call a company and the
greeting tells me to "listen carefully." I simply dial "0" for the
Operator because I just don't have time to screw around with this
stuff. Some companies are goofy enough to either not give a caller the
ability to dial "0", or they send "0" calls to some company mail box
during the day. That's when I call another company.
I
can't believe how many calls I get about cordless phones. Sometimes
they just don't work because of the construction of the building,
interference from other stuff using the same frequencies (like wireless
cameras or W-Fi), or they're just garbage. The only way to know if it
will work is to try it in your particular location. Make sure you can
return this expensive stuff if it doesn't work! Ask your phone
system vendor if they have one you can borrow for a couple of days
before ordering it (you'll probably have to pay for installation).
Cordless,
VoIP and cell phones are coming together in a new generation of
wireless phones. You can get Wi-Fi cordless phones that work over the
Internet instead of a phone line (even at a coffee shop), or a
combination cellular and Wi-Fi phone that will switch over to Wi-Fi
when you get to a hotspot, like your office or a coffee shop. I'd
either wait a while to adopt this new technology, or start buying
bigger bottles of Tums.
It
seems like "Buyer Beware" is important when
purchasing telecommunications these days.
How can
an otherwise smart business person get themselves (and their company)
into this?
An awful lot of
people are going for the lowest cost deal without trying it, checking
references, or asking their phone system vendor about it. Phone service
is phone service, right? NO!
The
Phone Company has been the poster child for bad service for decades
(remember Ernestine the Operator on Saturday Night Live?). It's
probably worse today than ever, because they've laid off everyone who
knew or cared, and now you talk to people who are as close to clueless
as possible. Next time you feel a need to ask your local Phone Company
something, ask your dog instead. The answer might be better than you
get from the people they hire today either here in the US, or in India.
If the first person you talk to is an idiot, just hang up and call
back. Keep doing it until someone answers who you can deal with. Not
everybody who works for the Phone Company is an idiot, so you'll
eventually get someone who is fairly sharp, and who cares. Call the
Phone Company back several times in the next few days to have them read
the order back to you (there's a pretty good chance it will be wrong
the first time). Have them fax you a copy of the order you just placed!
If this is what
you get calling the real Phone Company (who's guaranteed a profit
because they're a utility), what do you think will happen when you deal
with a VoIP provider? Even if you get wonderful service from a VoIP
provider or CLEC, they're probably using the Phone Company's copper to
get the data to your building, and they'll
have to deal with the Phone Company if something goes wrong with that
copper. Some VoIP providers and CLECs just don't offer the same level
of service as the Phone Company, no matter what. They have a limited
menu of products, services, and support that they offer. Just because
you can get a particular level of support from the real Phone Company
doesn't mean you can get it from a VoIP provider or CLEC.
I would suggest
that you keep some lines from the real Phone
Company. Unless phone calls aren't very important to your business, you
need to have a Plan B. If you're crazy enough to get your incoming
calls from someone other than the real Phone Company, make sure you
have a disaster plan so that they'll re-route your incoming calls to a
pre-determined number, like your cell phone. I'm not just talking about
a hurricane. I'm talking about losing power to your building, a water
leak onto your phone system or computers, a cable cut outside, or even
a fire. Cell phones are a good choice for outbound calls if your phone
service goes down, as long as the cell sites are still working in your
area. Since almost everybody has cell phones these days, outbound
calling in a disaster isn't much of a problem.
Having some real
phone lines from the Phone Company also lets you do some
troubleshooting. When everybody is pointing fingers at each other, the
easiest way to determine who's at fault is to replace a VoIP or CLEC
phone line with a real phone line (even a fax line would be handy in
that case). If the problem goes away, the problem is with the VoIP
provider or CLEC. If the problem is still there, the problem
is with the phone equipment.
Many of the phone system vendors tell me that they only find out that
their customer has switched to VoIP or a CLEC
after the customer has ordered the lines,
dropped their old lines, and things aren't working. The customer then
expects their vendor to make the phone system work with these new lines
one way or another. This is stressful for both the customer and the
phone system vendor, but many VoIP providers and CLECs don't care -
they figure it's not their problem, and they know they've got you
because you don't have any real phone lines, and you've signed a
contract for a zillion years to get the lowest rates. Some of the VoIP
providers and CLECs will go out of their way to help their customers.
Without doing some research, maybe trying a line or two to see if it
works with your equipment, and checking some references before you jump
in, you're really behind the 8-Ball...
Some VoIP
providers specifically target simple residential or small business
customers, but a business will order VoIP service from them because
it's so cheap or they want a particular feature. In many cases the VoIP
provider just doesn't have the level of support needed for a real
business customer. It's like buying a used Yugo to drive from New York
to LA.
There's nothing
inherently wrong with VoIP. It's just a way to digitize and transport
the digitized voice from one place to another. There's no reason the
quality has to be any worse than a traditional voice T1, which is
digitized using a different technique (but VoIP is
more prone to echo). Besides the fact that the equipment that most VoIP
providers use is not "Carrier Grade" like the real Phone Company uses
(which makes it somewhat less dependable), the biggest difference is
the bandwidth that's available to send the voice packets from Point A
to Point B.
One of the
problems with the modern telephone network is that a call starts out as
analog from the mouth of a guy on a telephone handset (which is always
analog). It then gets digitized many times
before the sound gets to the ear of the guy using a handset on the
other end of the call. It's very unlikely that a call would be analog
from end to end these days. Phone system manufacturers use one method
of digitization, the Phone Company uses another method of digitization,
and VoIP stuff uses still another method of digitization. As analog
voice is digitized, some of the information is lost. When it's changed
back to analog, a little more information is lost. The analog to
digital and back sequence can happen several times on a single call,
resulting in quite a bit of lost voice on the other end of the call.
Most of us are used to mechanical sounding voice, so we don't seem to
care. When analog touch tones go through that process, they can get
clobbered and the voice mail or whatever may not work right on the
other end of the call.
VoIP devices
usually hear the analog touch tone on the sending end, and covert it to
data. The VoIP device at the receiving end sees that data, and makes a
new touch tone right out of that device - which allows most devices
like Automated Attendants and Voice Mail systems to work correctly.
Because other digitization methods (like TDM and PCM) theoretically
have enough bandwidth reserved so the touch tone audio should make it
to the other end, the touch tones can get distorted as they are
digitized up and back via the different methods. In some cases, the
DTMF tones that are dialed just won't be recognized dependably if any
part of a call is VoIP - on either end. You
have to do a lot of testing with real calls before making a system live!
One other result
of several digital to analog conversions is echo. Echo is caused by
several factors, the main one being that a digitized telephone call is four
wire - with separate transmit and receive. A
traditional phone line is two wire,
with both sides of the conversation on the single pair. A device called
a hybrid transformer is used to convert four wire to two wire, or back.
The hybrid transformer is simply some windings of wire around a metal
core - but it's not simple. No matter how well the hybrid is made, it's
not 100% efficient, which means that some of the transmit and receive
audio gets mixed and sent back to the other side of the hybrid
transformer. That's called sidetone.
On a regular
analog phone call, the sidetone caused by the inefficiency of the
hybrid can't be heard because there's no delay. The sidetone created by
the inefficiency is increased if there's an impedance mismatch between
the analog line and the hybrid, but again you don't notice it because
it's pretty far in the background, and there's no delay. When the
conversation is digitized, there's a slight delay, which means that
sidetone is heard a fraction of a second later - which is why you hear
an echo. Most VoIP equipment has echo cancellers, but there's a limit
to how much echo they can cancel. Echo is increased if you have two
analog to digital conversions inside the phone system, like an analog
phone line going into a VoIP phone system, and someone talking on a
call on that line from an analog station port. Now you've got twice the
echo to deal with, coming at you from two places within the phone
system. It would be better to give users digital phones, instead of old
style analog phones that require an extra D to A conversion. The fewer
analog to digital conversions you can do on a call involving VoIP, the
better!
Some day well
into the future, voice will be digitized and transmitted as digital
data from end to end on a phone call, where it's converted back to
analog just once in the handset.
One of the
things that companies have had to deal with as they ordered digital
lines is that they can no longer easily record their employees'
conversations. There are some very expensive devices that you can hang
on a T1 line, and devices that will work with some
models of phone systems that decode the digital voice and send it to a
voice logger (recorder). If you don't use one of these devices, the
only place you can get analog audio on a digital phone system using
digital phones, is at the handset. That requires a little gizmo be
attached to the handset or headset jack on the phone, which sends the
analog audio to the voice logger on a spare pair of wires.
Even if
everything works OK, you might have voice quality issues with VoIP:
The frequency
bandwidth of a traditional telephone conversation is around 3,000
cycles per second (from around 300 to 3300 cycles per second). It's not
like listening to a radio or TV station, but it's OK for carrying on a
conversation. When those 3,000 cycles are digitized for a voice T1,
they end up taking about 64Kbps of data. You can fit exactly 24 of
those digitized voice conversations on a traditional T1, which reserves
the bandwidth for each conversation so it's always the same quality.
Now days,
everyone wants to (has to?) stretch everything to get the most bang for
the buck. The lowest price wins out, even if it's not the smartest
solution. Even if it doesn't work... "If there's a problem we'll deal
with it later. I'll get my bonus this quarter."
When cellular
phones came out, it became OK to have bad sounding telephone
conversations. While the original analog phones had the same 3,000 cps
reserved for voice, they sounded bad because the analog radio signals
would break up with static or noise.
When the cell
companies decided to digitize voice, they realized that we were already
putting up with crummy voice quality so they used their new digital
system to compress some of the traditional 3,000 cps of audio to
something that sounds pretty bad. The more conversations they can
carry, the fewer times the customer will see "Call Failed" (even if the
calls that don't "fail" sound like garbage).
It's not just
telephone traffic that gets compressed. Anything that can be digitized
can be compressed. You've probably noticed the effects of compressing a
satellite TV channel, or a satellite radio channel. You can certainly
see the effects of compression when you watch a video on the Internet,
where the picture is small and the quality low (but the audio usually
sounds pretty good because it takes the least bandwidth).
The reason that
all this stuff is compressed is simply so you can fit more of it into a
single pipe of limited bandwidth. Amazingly enough, VoIP calls don't
take up a lot of bandwidth. You can make many
internal calls on an office computer network (LAN) and they'll sound
great. You can make some calls on a broadband Internet connection, as
long as you have the same bandwidth to
the Internet as from the
Internet.
ADSL lines, the
type of DSL that the Phone Company usually provides, limit the upload
bandwidth but give you a pretty big download bandwidth. That works fine
for downloading movies or music, but since telephone calls are two-way,
making several simultaneous VoIP calls on an ADSL line often
works badly.
The real
problems show up when you try to make VoIP phone calls on a broadband
connection that's also being used to surf the web or for email. At that
point, the voice calls are competing for the limited bandwidth with web
pages and email. You'll hear the quality of the VoIP call get pretty
bad as someone starts to download (or upload) email, music or a web
page. Modern Ethernet Switches can use QOS (Quality of Service) rules
to give VoIP packets a priority, but few companies have the equipment,
or have it set-up properly.
Even if the VoIP
packets make it through to the Internet on your broadband connection,
you have no control over how those packets get to the other end of the
call. With a web page, if you see the bottom or the page before the top
for a second, nobody knows or cares. With a VoIP call, if the person on
the other end of the call hears the second half of your words first,
that ain't good. Luckily, there's a lot of bandwidth available at most
ISPs and on the backbone of the Internet, so that's not the main source
of bad sounding calls today. In the future, the
entire Internet might have QOS so that VoIP packets will get priority
no matter where they go, and calls will sound quite good.
Rather than
using your regular Internet connection for VoIP, there are companies
who will give you a T1 on their private digital network where the
packets don't have to compete with regular Internet traffic (often
called an ATM network - not
Cash Machines). The voice quality on that network, or even on your own
private T1 between branch offices, will be as good as a regular phone
company POTS call (unless you purposely limit the bandwidth of calls to
stuff more on a pipe).
If you're
getting VoIP strictly to save money, you won't like the private network
solution because it's expensive. If you're getting VoIP for the
features, and you have a business need for the features which will
either allow you to save money, make more money, or provide better
service to your customers, a connection to a private ATM network might
be just what you need to get your company into this leading edge
technology.
Some cable
companies are offering telephone service that they call VoIP.
It's "hip" to use the word VoIP these days. Although the cable company
is digitizing the telephone call using IP packets, which makes it VoIP,
they aren't sending the packets out over the public Internet, and
they're prioritizing the packets as they leave your premise, so TV
programs or Web surfing won't effect the quality of the call. Although
the quality of the voice will be about the same as the real Phone
Company, you're still going to be dealing with a box or features that
may or may not work well with the particular phones or system you have
connected to it. The box also needs electricity to run, so you need a
good UPS to be able to use the phones during a power failure.
Remember that if
you're using VoIP over your Internet connection, if the Internet goes
down, you won't have telephone lines, OR
email and the Web.
It's an insane idea for most businesses to switch 100% to VoIP. If your
business is telephone intensive and you're selling something, it would
be a good idea to use real phone lines where the quality of the call
won't become an issue in the sales process. Just do your homework
before committing to any of this leading edge technology - so it
doesn't become
bleeding edge for your company.
A VoIP Provider is NOT a real
phone company. If you know that going in, you should be able to
successfully implement VoIP at your company... Because you'll
have realistic
expectations.
A little background is necessary to understand what you're getting into
by being a first adopter of VoIP. This is still early in VoIP's
development. You're participating in a big experiment.
In the beginning, there was the
Phone Company. Only one Phone Company. You got your phone lines from
them, and you rented your
telephone equipment from them.
They weren't perfect, but it was all we had, and we could make and
receive calls just fine. As a matter of fact, they sounded pretty good
compared to today's cell and VoIP calls.
The phones that the Phone Company rented out were as tough as nails.
The 500 set (rotary dial), and then the 2500 set (touch tone), became
the standard by which all other phones were judged. When the Phone
Company finally came out with Decorator Phones (like Mickey Mouse, or a
fancy phone in a box), the innards always had the same components as a
regular 2500 set.
The 2500 set is still the gold standard for both the Phone Company and
VoIP providers. They have the same attitude... If the line works with a
standard 2500 set, then the line is fine and it's your problem (click).
Unfortunately, nobody actually uses 2500 sets these days (except my
Mother). They're using all kinds of electronic telephone stuff. Even
the feature phones you buy at the Office Biggie store don't work on
every phone line (but hopefully you can return them).
When the Phone Company was
broken up into a lot of smaller parts, it became legal for other
companies to sell you telephone equipment. Eventually, you were also
able to get your phone lines from other companies. The first
generations of telephone equipment that were sold to the public were
still tough as nails. A lot of the designs were licensed from Western
Electric, who designed the original equipment. Today's telephone
equipment is not tough as nails (it's closer to spaghetti). Almost
everything is designed as a throwaway - figuring the maximum life many
be a few years (months?).
The engineers who design today's telecom equipment, the factories who
produce it, and the companies who sell it are so far removed from the
quality standards of the Phone
Company that there is no comparison in the equipment... But,
for some reason (that I can't figure out) consumers and companies
assume that every piece of telephone equipment that's made is still up
to the standards of the Phone
Company of yesterday.
No way!
The CPE (Customer Provided Equipment, which is phones or phone systems)
that's available today is essentially throw-away. Phones that were
rented in the old days would often last decades. While some of today's
equipment can be fixed if it breaks, most of it
can't be fixed economically because of the way it's made (surface mount
components that are hard to replace). It's just cheaper for the
manufacturer to send you a new gizmo than to try to repair the bad one.
If you do send your old one in for repair, they'll often throw it in a
pile and sell it for scrap, or maybe send it back to China to be
refurbished in the future.
How often telephone equipment breaks isn't that big a deal these days.
In some applications it doesn't work right out of the box. The
engineers who design today's telephones, phone systems or VoIP stuff
come from a digital world of 1's and 0's. The way 1's and 0's act in a
digital device is always the same if the device isn't broken. Analog is
much more complicated - closer to an art than science.
Almost all of
the telephone instruments made these days are made to be as "hip"
looking as possible. Most manufacturers have odd shaped phones, odd
shaped buttons, and odd shaped handsets. While in the old days you
could get an amplified, noise cancelling, or push-to-talk handset for
just about any phone, most phones made today are incompatible with
anything else on the market, and the manufactures don't even think
about the special stuff that their customer may need, like an amplified
handset. Companies buy new telephones, and forget that they had special
stuff like loud ringers or amplified handsets attached to some of the
phones, and the same stuff isn't available for the new stuff.
For many years,
the "key system" has been the most popular type of phone system. In a
key system, there's a button and a light for each line, and a hold
button. While you can intercom someone and tell them to pick up a line,
a lot of people just yell over and tell someone to "Pick up line 4."
Larger companies with a lot of lines use a PBX. Since you can't get
hundreds of buttons on a telephone in a larger business (and even if
you could there would be too many to use), a PBX lets a user dial a
code (like 9) to get an outside line, and automatically answer whatever
incoming call that rings their phone (or it might ring a couple of
"loop" keys). Users hate going from a key system to a PBX because
they're forced to transfer every call to someone, instead of just
putting a call on hold and telling them to pick up a particular line.
Most of the VoIP phones and systems sold today work like a PBX, where
you can't see the status of every line. Maybe you can stick a couple of
lines on most phones, but you usually can't make it work like the old
familiar key system. Since there are a limited number of buttons, you
don't get to have very many BLF/DSS (Busy Lamp Field/Direct Station
Selection) keys that show you if someone at another extension is on the
phone. If you've never had these features, you probably won't care.
A worse problem
on a lot of the VoIP phones is the lack of sidetone.
Sidetone is when you hear a little of your own voice coming back to you
in your ear, as you talk on the phone. That gives you a nice warm
feeling that the phone isn't dead. Dead
is the exact description of what you hear when you talk if a
phone doesn't have sidetone. Some people can get used to it, and some
can't (I can't). You also lose the ability to record from the handset
jack of that kind of phone, since you only hear one side of the
conversation, the outside caller, if there's no sidetone. The nice
thing about recording a call from the handset jack on a normal phone is
that you hear both sides of the conversation, and
the levels are balanced so that the person inside isn't a lot louder
than the person outside. If you don't have several users try a phone
before you buy a lot of them, you could be in for a mutiny!
Most of today's engineers look at analog connections to a phone line or
phone as easy stuff that's pretty much beneath them. They figure the
analog telephone connection is simple, and they whip that out in no
time. Problem is, the analog connection isn't simple. It's actually
very difficult when you consider all of the possible combinations of
old and new devices that can be connected together. Unlike a digital
interface, which is simply trading 1's and 0's between two pieces of
equipment, the analog interface deals with AC and DC voltage and
current, db levels, impedance, resistance, noise and imbalances.
Most of the VoIP boxes on the market today do a poor job of emulating a
real phone line. One side of the coin is bad engineering, but the other
side is cost. The manufacturers feel that they don't want to put an
extra 25 cents worth of parts into a device if it's only going to be
needed by 20% (or less) of the users. That works OK for the 80%, but it
causes real headaches for the customers who buy the stuff expecting it
to work, and it doesn't. Most of the VoIP providers don't care. The 80%
are giving them so much cash that they don't feel a need to start doing
the much harder work of getting the other 20% working - so they don't.
Most VoIP providers are perfectly happy to take the VoIP device back if
it doesn't work in your application, which costs them very little. The
problem is that the customer thought it would work
OK, and they went through a lot of pain and expense to try to make it
work.
VoIP works fine 99.9% of the time when the application is simply making
outbound calls by a real person. It's when you try to do something as
simple as putting an answering machine on the line when things start to
go down hill. People pick up a phone, make or answer a call, and hang
up the phone when they're done. Automated Attendants, Voice Mail,
answering machines and automated telecom devices expect to see cues
that help the machine deal with the call.
Some VoIP devices (and even T1 Channel Banks) ignore the standard cues
(protocols) that have been used on US telephone lines for decades. In
today's global economy, the Chinese VoIP box that you bought here is
probably sold in 50 other countries, some of which use different cues.
The VoIP providers are looking to install as many lines as possible,
and they don't really care whether the box is made to work well in
England, China or the US. They just use it here in the US because they
need a box that's cheap and easy to get. When your telephone equipment
gets the wrong cues it may not ring correctly (besides having the wrong
ring voltage or not enough current, some phone system COs won't
recognize ringing other than regular 2 seconds on, 4 seconds off), the
voice mail may never hang-up at the end of a message, the volume may be
low or high, or you may have echo.
Analog station
ports on mainstream phone systems usually don't do a very good job of
emulating a real phone line. If you're thinking of plugging a station
port from a phone system into a VoIP gateway, the gateway may not
recognize the station port as a real phone line because there's not
enough talk battery, loop current, ring voltage or the wrong ring
cadence.
While you may be able to fix these problems by adding voltage or
current, changing the impedance, attenuating the audio, or getting a
witch doctor... you may not be able to fix it even after playing with
it for hours. That's not
a terrible thing if you want to be on the cutting edge of
technology and really need the features or cost savings, but it's INSANE
to just order the stuff and disconnect your old stuff - assuming
everything will work fine.
The
bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of
low price has faded from memory.
Aldo
Gucci, 1938
See
the VoIP
Checklist
for a quick list of things to check before jumping into VoIP.




630-980-7710
Copyright
© 2007 • Mike Sandman Enterprises, Inc.