VoIP De-Mystified
How to choose the best VoIP Plan
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), aka
broadband phone service, IP Telephony, Voice over IP, I-Net telephony, Internet Telephony, IP Phones and
Internet Phone service is a service that allows you to make and receive phone calls via a broadband
internet connection. You might use your same phone as you have used for POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service),
but instead of being connected to the phone line coming into your home or business,
it's connected to a small box called a Digital Terminal Adapter (dta). As with normal phone service,
several phones may be connected to the line from the dta so
that the phone number can be answered from different locations. For more information on how to connect a VoIP
phone, read VoIP Connection. Optionally, you can use
an IP phone, an instrument which connects directly to your Internet connection.
At Persimmon Telecommunications, you are offered the BEST plans in the industry for your personal and/or
business needs. You may go directly to a list of
VoIP services. Below we give suggestions for how you can best shop for and compare VoIP plans.
Transportability: A benefit of VoIP service is that once you have a phone number assigned
to your dta or IP phone, you can plug it into practically any broadband Internet connection to make and
receive calls. As far as the person at the other end knows, you are in your home or business.
They can reach you by dialing your IP phone number and, if you call them and allow caller ID,
they will see your IP phone number. You could be making and receiving calls from
across the country or even from another country. With that said, be aware that a VoIP call will not
work satisfactory on all broadband connections - some organizations block VoIP service consciously
or accidentally.
Features: Many have achieved staff productivity improvements through the use of VoIP. VoIP
delivers PBX functionality. This means that many features that, in the past,
were only available to large organizations via their complex phone systems are now available at little
or no additional cost. As they are developed, new features can easily be added to your service via a
software update. Features available at no additional cost on many VoIP services include 3- or 4-digit
extension dialing, voice mail, Caller ID, 3-way calling, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding and
On-Line Account Management.
Reliability and Quality: Although you occasionally encounter busy signals, POTS is close to
100% reliable. PCs are less reliable; for example, at times you must reboot them. When it comes to
reliability or availability, VoIP service is between POTS and PCs. VoIP service is generally
more than 90% reliable; sometimes you need to reboot the dta. Sometimes, there is a small delay on
some VoIP services. A common result of this delay is that both persons on a phone call may
begin speaking at the same time. Of course, reliability of your VoIP service is directly related to
the reliability of your Internet connection. If your Internet connection is down, your VoIP phone
service is not usable from that location. And some users experience voice quality problems, but these
can often be corrected by network tuning. To assure good quality of service, you must use MPLS or,
at least an approach to provide Quality of Service or Class of Service (CoS). With CoS, priority is
given to voice packets so that other data transfers do not clobber the voice signal. If you purchase
a VoIP service from the same provider who is supplying your Internet Access, normally that provider
keeps the voice packets on a network over which they can provide Quality of Service to assure your
voice quality will be equivalent to that of POTS service. With that said, many residences and small
businesses use independent VoIP services at a significantly lower cost and experience good quality
voice most of the time if they have a good solid Internet Connection. The quality in this situation
is typically between the quality of landline service and cell phone service.
Porting of Existing Numbers: You may port your current land line phone number(s) to
your VoIP service. Porting success rate is about 80%. For example, if you have DSL service from certain carriers, they do not allow you to port the number associated with the DSL service unless you cancel the DSL service. There is also a flavor of DSL known as Naked DSL that is not associated with any phone number; however, not all carriers offer this option in all locations. A few years ago, porting numbers to a VoIP service would often take more than a month and would sometimes took several months. The process has been improved to where porting today typically takes place within a month - two weeks is not unusual.
For more "VoIP De-Mystified" info for residential and small business users, see the VoIP Slide presentation (PowerPoint Presentation).
In many cases, unlimited VoIP service to the USA and Canada costs less than local phone service
(including taxes and fees) from your local phone company. Each VoIP plan includes either low cost or
unlimited domestic long distance calling and low cost worldwide long distance calling. The "Unlimited"
plans discussed here do not actually allow truly unlimited calling. Each carrier has their definition
of "unlimited". Some examples are "amount of calling done by typical residential customers", "amount of
calling done by normal businesses that are not call centers", "3000 minutes per line per month",
"50,000 minutes per month per T1", and "101,000 minutes per T1 per month". In some cases, carriers
charge a specified overage rate if the monthly "unlimited" maximum is exceeded. In other cases, the
customer's plan is retroactively changed to a per minute plan and all calls since the account was open
are retroactively billed at the per minute rate. In summary, if you purchase a "residential unlimited"
plan for a business or a "business unlimited" plan for a call center type operation, you may be in for
an unpleasant surprise.
A good residential VoIP plan is the
Unlimited Monthly
$19.95 per month one year contract. As of this writing, there is a "first month free" and "free
shipping" offer. This plan includes unlimited calling to USA, Canadian and some other country's numbers.
You can see the other country info by clicking on the "Tell Me More" button in the "Low International
Voip Rates" section. However, if this plan does not include all the countries that you desire, the
Residential Freedom Unlimited $24.99 per month plan includes Unlimited Calls to the USA, Canada, Guam, Puerto Rico, the USVI (US Virgin Islands), and calls to land lines in France, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Note that calls to mobile phones, premium, special, and information service numbers in France, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom are not included in the unlimited service plan and will be billed at the metered rates. There is an associated $199 per year option with each of these plans. Also, there is a $29.99 plan that includes more countries for unlimited calling and, at the other end of the spectrum, there are $9.99 and $14.99 plans with 200 and 500 unlimited minutes after which you pay a per minute rate.
The business VoIP plan that is most attractive for many small to medium size businesses is the
Packet8 Virtual Office plan. The Packet8 Virtual
Office plan includes a business quality phone system. It is a hosted PBX solution that includes features
found in large office PBX systems, for example, it includes an autoattendant. For Virtual Office, there
is a minimum of 3 phones that must be purchased. At the link in this paragraph, there is another option
for a smaller office which is the Business 2000 plan.
A successful business VoIP implementation, especially with a large number of phone lines, may require
a better connection to the Internet than some small businesses have today and/or an improved office network.
Especially with a hosted PBX, improved latency, jitter and Quality of Service (QOS) may be required for
satisfactory operation. Go to the last paragraph on this page for information on testing your broadband
connection for VoIP.
SIP Trunking is growing as the
technology of choice for those organizations that make a lot of outbound calls and/or receive a lot
of toll free calls. From the discussion above, you can see that "Unlimited" plans are generally not the
solution for call centers and other businesses that have a lot of toll calls. SIP Call origination and
termination can be the solution for high traffic customers, for customers who have significant changes in
call volumes from time to time, and for customers who would like diverse DIDs in different parts of the
world. SIP Trunking is raw IP Telephony service that is used with a IP PBX or gateway connecting to the
Internet. The PBX used must be designed with a SIP interface. Otherwise, a gateway can be used to do the
conversion. Depending on call volume and other characteristics of the requirement, per minute rates can be
in the vicinity of a penny per minute. Some carriers providing SIP services require that their SIP
customers use an Internet connection also supplied by the carrier. This way the carrier can assure that the
SIP voice packets are given priority over other data traffic. However, many SIP service providers allow the
use of any Internet connection. As long as there is plenty of available bandwidth for the SIP traffic,
this is usually not a problem. Most SIP implementations use Codec G.729 which requires 20 to 30 Kbps per
voice channel. If higher quality voice is desired, Codec G.711 can be used; it uses 80 to 90 Kbps per
voice channel. For faxing, T.38 is recommended. It has been found that some PBX specialists seem to be able
to readily set up PBXs for T.38 use and others do not seem to be able to get their PBXs to work on T.38.
It's not clear if the limitation is in the PBX or has more to do with the expertise of the PBX programmer.
For further details on SIP Trunking, request
Voice quotes at t1guy.com, include a note about SIP in the comments section, and a consultant will
contact you to discuss options for your situation.
Alarm Systems that work on standard analog phone (POTS) lines may not work over VoIP lines. If you
have an existing Alarm System, it is recommended that you keep a POTS line for that system. If you are
installing a new Alarm System, you could install an IP system that would work over the Internet.
Fax machines generally work on VoIP systems. However, typically they can not be used over VoIP
at speeds higher than 9600 baud and most VoIP providers do not guarantee or recommend the use of Fax
machines over their systems. Whether or not a fax goes through depends on such things as which model
Fax machine you have and, perhaps, the phase of the moon. Although many of us use Fax machines
successfully over VoIP, if your business involves the heavy use of a Fax machine, you should
probably keep a POTS line for your Fax machine; this line can also serve as a backup line in case the
VoIP system is down. The best IP solution for faxing is to use T.38 which is supported by some
IP Telephony providers.
VoIP 911 service There has been considerable discussion in the media about VoIP 911 service
or lack thereof as provided by some VoIP providers. The FCC issued an order that states,
"VoIP providers must deliver all 911 calls to the customer’s local emergency operator. This must be
a standard, rather than optional, feature of the service". It also includes that "VoIP providers must
provide emergency operators with the call back number and location information of their customers
(i.e., E911) where the emergency operator is capable of receiving it. Although the customer must
provide the location information, the VoIP provider must provide the customer a means of updating
this information, whether he or she is at home or away from home". VoIP carriers who have not complied
with these requirements must cease marketing and accepting new customers in areas where they are not
connecting 911 calls with the person's location and phone number. Existing customers do not have to
be disconnected if the 911 service is not yet operational in their area.
Shop and Compare VoIP Services Although it's a work in progress, here is a spreadsheet that
compares various VoIP plans:
VoIP Comparison (Microsoft Excel Worksheet). Features available from at least one
VoIP provider are listed in the left column. Then, entries are made indicating which service provides
each feature. Once you choose a plan of interest, go to that provider's web site and examine carefully
what they say about the features that are important to you. Some of the features listed on the
VoIP plan comparison worksheet are defined or implemented very differently from one vendor to the next.
Here are the links to the various companies where you can read about them and sign up for service:
Monthly and Yearly Unlimited VoIP Services
and
Packet8.
If you do not yet have a broadband Internet connection (for example, cable, DSL, or T1),
go to Broadband Internet Access to compare options, shop for
and order the one that best fits your needs.
To see how suitable your broadband connection is for VoIP, go to
testyourvoip.com/ and/or to
MyVOIPSpeed Server. At the latter, click on a location on the map that is
close to you. For a good picture of the suitability of your broadband internet
access for VoIP, run the test a number of times during busy times of the day.
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