Changing to VOIP and working remotely

Hello all.

We are a small Recruitment Agency in the UK (3 employees) looking to ditch our BT system and use VOIP. Two things are vital, one is call transfer and the other is working from a remote location, in this case Canada. The work server/data will remain in the UK office with one person working from that location, while the other two (me and wifey) will eventually be working from Canada. In the short term, we want to test a system by working from home, logging in to the work PC network and making our calls through VOIP.

Is there a UK system we could use and road test, which would still work when the two of us move to Canada?

I am in Canada (Newfoundland) and have a Linksys SPA3102 that we use for communications. My brother in the UK has a Grandstream 286 and a relative in Canada also has a 3102. We can call eachother (IP to IP or via Voxalot) and it seems to work very well as long as no user tries to use a multiple torrent downloads! We also have the regular phone as back up but here loss of the internet is rare. I can have my 3102 transfer calls to my office (voip - pstn) and call my home number and then on via voip (pstn to voip). I seems to work OK. I think you must make sure that you have reliable High Speed Internet at both ends

Thanks for the reply Dibs, I think I need to check up on Canadian ISPs and what the costs are likely to be.

My main concern is that I need to be able to make cheap calls from Canada to normal UK landlines and mobiles/cellphones, and that my clients and candidates can call a UK number (at UK prices) which we can pick up in Canada.

Also, could I expect good quality of calls, or would there be lag/echoing on most calls from Canada to the UK?

MontyBurns :

Thanks for the reply Dibs, I think I need to check up on Canadian ISPs and what the costs are likely to be.

I think I pay about $34+taxes per month from Aliant (Bell Canada) for the middle range ADSL.

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My main concern is that I need to be able to make cheap calls from Canada to normal UK landlines and mobiles/cellphones

Calling the UK is cheap at between 1 and 2 US cents/minute. The quality is generally very good and most people called are unaware that voip is being used. Calls to UK mobiles are expensive or seem so as the caller pays for the call. In Canada local PSTN calls are free and the recipient of the call pays the wireless charge.

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and that my clients and candidates can call a UK number (at UK prices) which we can pick up in Canada.

Voipuser can provide numbers in the UK, the 0844 series have a relatively low fee and the small amount that voipuser gets pays for some free outgoing calls.

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Also, could I expect good quality of calls, or would there be lag/echoing on most calls from Canada to the UK?

Call quality is usually very good and somtimes better than PSTN. There is no significant lag and no echo provided the equipment is correctly adjusted. DIDs are available in most ares of Canada.