Small business hosted VOIP service UK, 15 extensions

Hi everyone

We're a small business based in the UK and we've had the same phone system for at least 10 years now and I think it's time for change. Also the backup battery has gone in the unit and the cost our local provider quoted for replacement was £300... so if we're going to move to a new system it would make sense to do it now.

There's 7-10 users in one office, 1-3 that work from home and other locations, and 1 other based in the US.
I really like the idea of everyone being on the same phone system and being able to reach each other by dialling an extension. So if someone can work from home, they can do so easily by just firing up a softphone.

At the moment we have 3 phone lines so that's 3 simultaneous incoming/outgoing calls and that's fine for us really. Might be useful to up that to say 5 or 6 to include calls between extension numbers.

Switching to a hosted VOIP PBX would mean we could save the cost of those 3 BT line rentals. As well as a 4th BT line which is a work line at the home of one of the directors.

We have a regular ADSL2+ connection provided by BeThere and we get speeds of 18-20mbit down and 1.5mbit upload which I believe should be ok for a few simultaneous calls. This connection is shared with general web browsing and our e-mail server.

We have a UK geographic number which we would like to have ported to the system.
We're not bothered about DDI, everyone calling a single number and anyone being able to answer is what we're looking for.
Per-user voicemail isn't necessary. However a master voicemail if noone answers within x number of rings would be useful when we're all out of the office.

We also have a US toll free number which is toll free from US and Canada (currently with Telstra Europe, now Daisy Communications) where we get re-charged the fees when people call that number. It would be great to have that ported to the system as well.
This number actually gets transferred to 2 other numbers (depending on whether someone's calling from the US or Canada) and these then get bounced on to our main UK geographic number.
If this toll free number was ported to a VOIP system, would this cut the cost of calls when people call it?

Most of the calls we make and receive are international (US, Germany, Italy) with a few UK. But we're pretty light on usage in the scheme of things.

I was initially looking at Gradwell but I found some negative reviews regarding their reliability (http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews-all-145982.html#tabs-menu). But I like the idea of their £25 per month package which includes a bunch of international minutes.

I have also found Voipfone (http://www.voipfone.co.uk) after a bit of digging around these forums. But I have no idea how reliable they are.

The idea of a hosted PBX is appealing as it means someone else worries about the hardware/reliability.
I did think of running our own AsteriskNow installation but having that sat on our ADSL connection could be problematic. You'd probably want a dedicated/colocated server for something like that, correct? Asterisk itself sounds pretty complex, I'm used to "adminning" Linux boxes (our NAS/e-mail/FTP/intranet database/firewall servers are all Linux)

Anyone got any comments on Gradwell/Voipfone?
Are there any other providers I should consider?
Any other comments/suggestions on this?

Cheers, B

Greetings BF and Welcome to Voipuser

You are well on the way towards solving your own queries. I would suggest you do a Google Search using the term 'Hosted Voip' which will give you some useful further reading.

It's very difficult for us to comment about specific providers and anything anyone else posts in an open forum like this is unlikely to be impartial. Always try to check that any bad rep that you read is not coming from a competitor trying to boost it's own credibility.

One of the best things about VoIP is flexibility and ease of changing providers. I would just make your best choice of provider (someone that provides the facilities you want at a cost you think appropriate) and give them a go. If they are responsible enough to offer an SLA (Service Level Agreement) then the chances are they will work out well and if not you can move elsewhere.

Ok I've been going around looking at various providers. voipfone seem to have the features we want.

However it looks like we could have a problem porting a particular number across.

We're based in the UK but we have a US/Canada toll free phone number. Nearly all of our customers use this number.
It's toll free from the US and Canada (866 area code) and depending on the country of the caller, this gets redirected to different domestic numbers (one for US, another for Canada), and then redirected to our UK geographic number.

Should I look for a US-based ITSP and port our toll free number(s) to them?
Then redirect those calls using VoIP to our UK ITSP?

Or does that create too many "hops" and introduce latency/echo?

Cheers, B

Quote:

Or does that create too many "hops" and introduce latency/echo?

It depends on how the ITSP operates its own network/backhaul. If they route using TDM, then actually there's no VoIP, so you'll have quality of service end to end and no problems.

If they route over the internet to a UK point of presence, then there's a risk.

Bear in mind though, 99% of QoS issues are in the last mile, from your "local" ITSP to your phone or PBX.

The safe bet is to port the US/Canada toll-free number to the UK ITSP. And check with the UK ITSP that the call will come in via TDM and not over the internet from the US/Canada. Then make sure you have a good quality internet connection.

Excellent info!

Unfortunately I'm having difficulty finding UK ITSPs that support the porting of the US/Canada toll free number.
They support US toll free but not a combined US/Canada one even though it's a completely valid thing.
Unfortunately www.voipfone.co.uk don't support international number porting but the features of their hosted PBX looked killer for us

Gradwell support it but I'm worried about some of the reviews I've found and the features aren't as great as voipfone

Unless I can find a US-based ITSP to host the number that routes to a UK endpoint via TDM.
At the moment the costs I'm trying to cut are the call charges from our toll free number.

I have spoken to one US ITSP called GPhone.com and they said they would expect the quality/latency of bouncing the toll free over IP to our PBX to be decent, but I don't want to get us set up with a killer hosted PBX only to find that we need to change to someone who supports the porting of our US/Ca toll free

Cheers for the info... I'll keep digging