Additional phone line

[BBE]

If I want a land line number for the business and a seperate number for private use do I need a seperate connection, i.e. two physical wires coming into the house? I've had a look at internet options like skype but never really been very successful.

 

[Kidds]

There are usually enough spare wires in the existing cable to do it, always have been any place I've done it anyway.

 

[Adam@Rumen]

Have a look at VOIP phones - they make and receive calls through your internet connection. We have a number on the same broadband, all with different numbers. Cheap too, about £6 or £7 a month.

 

[Timbo]

Have a look at VOIP phones - they make and receive calls through your internet connection. We have a number on the same broadband, all with different numbers. Cheap too, about £6 or £7 a month.

Also have a virtual my-area code number for a secondary business.

 

[BBE]

Thanks. Just had a quick look at VOIP. Any recommended providers?

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

I get along just fine with sipgate. Been using them for about 7 years. Have multiple numbers with them - they run to my little asterisk box.

The proviso with any VoIP service is a half decent broadband connection. That’s not just outright speed but latency and jitter. So for example satellite based broadband is out. If you don’t know what that means I can explain further.

 

[Farfrae]

I use Sipgate Basic on my 4G internet. I have another local number with the same dialling code. As it's just for incoming calls it's totally free. A standard Yealink SIP phone with power adapter cost £15 secondhand off Ebay.

 

[J B]

If you don’t know what that means I can explain further.

Please do

 

[BBE]

I get along just fine with sipgate. Been using them for about 7 years. Have multiple numbers with them - they run to my little asterisk box.

The proviso with any VoIP service is a half decent broadband connection. That’s not just outright speed but latency and jitter. So for example satellite based broadband is out. If you don’t know what that means I can explain further.

We had fibre installed to the nearest cabinet last year which improved the connection no end. Still copper for last few hundred meters but a world apart from what we had. Thanks for recommendation, I'll give it a try.

 

[Clive]

Thanks. Just had a quick look at VOIP. Any recommended providers?

BT cloud phone - we have several numbers now and iirc they are only something like £3/ month each

Works well with app to redirect calls to mobiles or hone etc and answer phone etc

 

[BBE]

BT cloud phone - we have several numbers now and iirc they are only something like £3/ month each

Works well with app to redirect calls to mobiles or hone etc and answer phone etc

BT cloud phone - we have several numbers now and iirc they are only something like £3/ month each

Works well with app to redirect calls to mobiles or hone etc and answer phone etc

Thanks. I'll have a look.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Please do

...assuming you’re not being facetious J B ...

Voice traverses the internet like any other data, as the internet is a giant “packet switched” data network. The senders “codec” chops the voice signal up into little packets of data and sends them on their merry way to navigate. These data packets are then reassembled at the remote end by the receivers codec to form (hopefully) intelligible speech.

However as the path between the sender and receiver can be quite inconsistent and variable due to the dynamic nature of the internet, including bursts of traffic, and the variety of ways folks connect into the core internet network, it can introduce various delays. This directly affects the quality of the service (so called QoS) for voice.

Delay is a measure of how long it takes to send a packet (series of them usually) and to get the associated response. It’s measured in milliseconds. When you “ping” a server you are measuring this aggregate delay. For decent quality voice over IP connection you’d want measured ping times to ideally be less than about 50 ms. Lower is better and higher is worse. High ping times can result in a echo effects.

Jitter is the measure of the variation in delay between the arrival of different packets from sender to receiver. Think of the data packets as cars driving in a multi-lane road. If the cars were even across the lanes then there would be no jitter. On the other hand if there is a big spread of distance between the cars in lanes A, B and C then they would cross an imaginary line at different times. This is jitter, it’s a measure of this spread in arrival times of the various packet.

Again for voice we want the jitter (variation in delay) to be as low as possible. High jitter times result in a range of distortion to the voice service. Ideally a jitter time less than around 15 milliseconds.

The final thing with voice quality is packet loss. Hopefully that’s self explanatory, we’re aiming for less than 1% packet loss for voice. Packet loss is really bad as it results in drop outs and gaps in the conversation.

if you want to read more, here are some good links..

QoS - Quality of Service - in VOIP implementations.

QoS (Quality of Service) is a major issue in VOIP implementations. Learn more about Latency, Jitter, Packet Loss, Burstiness of Loss and Jitter.

www.voip-info.org

Quality of Service Design Overview > QoS Requirements of VoIP | Cisco Press

This chapter provides an overview of the QoS design and deployment process. This process requires business-level objectives of the QoS implementation to be defined clearly and for the service-level requirements of applications to be assigned preferential or deferential treatment so that they can...

www.ciscopress.com

 

[J B]

if you want to read more, here are some good links..

I just wanted to know if it would work on our Airband internet service, that's all

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

I just wanted to know if it would work on our Airband internet service, that's all

Why don’t you try it out for free. How’s your Skype and WhatsApp voice calls like?

 

[Timbo]

FTTC :

 

[J B]

Why don’t you try it out for free. How’s your Skype and WhatsApp voice calls like?

Hmm
Ditched Skype about 10 years ago, can't even remember why.
Don't use Whatsapp voice very much as we currently have inclusive BT to landlines (*) and inclusive mobile calls (with the Three booster box thingy to aid the signal)
When I do use Whatsapp it works OK but there is an occasional delay

* = if we could ditch the BT account (£ pcm) that would be great but
a) we do need to keep our number that we've had for the last 50 years and
b) it needs to work properly otherwise 'the management' won't be happy.
Account runs till the new year so time to try and see ...

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Hmm
Ditched Skype about 10 years ago, can't even remember why.
Don't use Whatsapp voice very much as we currently have inclusive BT to landlines (*) and inclusive mobile calls (with the Three booster box thingy to aid the signal)
When I do use Whatsapp it works OK but there is an occasional delay

* = if we could ditch the BT account (£ pcm) that would be great but
a) we do need to keep our number that we've had for the last 50 years and
b) it needs to work properly otherwise 'the management' won't be happy.
Account runs till the new year so time to try and see ...

Cool. Just saying try another VoIP app or service, whatever takes your fancy for free before you commit to something and find your broadband isn’t up to scratch.

VoIP works very well and is a mature technology- just need to make sure your foundation is solid. The other stuff in your abc list is all doable.

 

[J B]

Cool.

Just saying try another VoIP app or service, whatever takes your fancy for free before you commit to something and find your broadband isn’t up to scratch.

VoIP works very well and is a mature technology- just need to make sure your foundation is solid. The other stuff in your abc list is all doable.

I assume for a true VOIP system, I would have to replace the 4 cordless handsets that we have with new ones?
Currently we have a 'base station' in the cupboard next to the master socket and then cordless around the house (the handsets are very good Panasonic, but all over 12 years old!)
We also have the house 'data cabled' from here to most corners of the house.

Thoughts?

?

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

I assume for a true VOIP system, I would have to replace the 4 cordless handsets that we have with new ones?
Currently we have a 'base station' in the cupboard next to the master socket and then cordless around the house (the handsets are very good Panasonic, but all over 12 years old!)
We also have the house 'data cabled' from here to most corners of the house.

Thoughts?

?

I’d simply buy a new DECT cordless phone base (and associated DECT handsets) that has a VoIP client built into the base. You can also connect up a a traditional phone line to the base and use both the VoIP and copper phone connection.

I’ve successfully used the (Siemens) Gigaset N300A IP base and compatible handsets. The base costs about £50 or so and just plugs into an Ethernet port from your router (or via a structured cabling Cat5e/Cat6 outlet that is patched back to your router) and hence internet connection. You should be able to get a decent package price with some judicious googling that includes the base and 2 or 4 handsets included in the deal. Think I used ligo.com last time from memory.

You do the setup via web browser pointed to the phone base and set up the built in VoIP client on the base to talk to your VoIP / SIP service provider.

I’ve done this many times and it works great.

PM me if you need help, but it’s all fairly straightforward to setup and you should be up and running in half an hour.