Novice to voice services in general - please help me learn?

[Q6600]

I am the IT manager for a medium sized health clinic. I have been doing data for over 10 years, but I am quite inexperienced with voice services.

I have been given the task of finding a new system to support our building which I believe utilizes ~100-200 "DIDs."

I have been talking with many vendors regarding new hardware and many carriers for new services, and I feel quite a bit.. undereducated.

Can anyone suggest a good site(s) where I can read up on the _basics_ of keywords thrown at me daily like:
PRI LINES, FLEX IP, TDM, DID, ANALOG TRUNKS, ETC.

Right now we are using “old copper T1’s” and we are told that whatever route we go, “bonded PRI lines” and/or “Flex IP T1’s” are the way to go.

Ive done my own searches for general descriptions of these things individually but what Id really like to find is like a dummies version of something that ties all these mentioned technologies together with their relationship to one another.

Thanks.

 

[vztech]

It's basic

http://www22.verizon.com/wholesale/glossary/?l=i

FYI -stick with PRI's when going to the new system

It's only dialtone-VZ

 

[Q6600]

Thanks for the response, been reading thu it for the last few min. Didnt see much on Flex IP lines. Why do you suggest against them?

Thanks again.

 

[DocVic]

Cost come to mind. Copper T-1's and PRI's work great for voice and data. They fail once every 18 months, and it takes 1-2 hours to recover. If you're moving to Gigabit data, yeah, fiber is the way to go. Voice is still slow speed and always will be. Voice channels only take 7-24K per conversation, and that's for a good call. 1.2 mb T-1's work great for voice. The hype of VoIP makes data companies millions. Most of my clients have tried it, and don't like it because they have to share a data circuit. And when those special people start downloading junk, voice suffers.
Just a thought.

DocVic
Dedicated to Nortel Products till the end.
Need help? Call Me Now!

 

[pbxn]

Copper PRI's are fine and are in use in alot of business'. Larger business may go the ring route, where there's some redundancy built in.
Agree with Doc regarding the VoIP solution. Any vendor can make it sound like a cheaper solution. Going VoIP, you're sharing a circuit with the data side and thus creating a SPOF, if the network goes down/burps your phones are affected. Verses having PRI's going into a PBX of some sort running basic voice.
We use both, but the VoIP is more of a backup solution if the PBX goes down (rare).
Talk with your provider and see what your options are. Also talk with your business units to see their big picture (DR site in future etc). Any good sales engineer will sit down explain and discuss in detail what options are out there and what may be best for you.

 

[dj4020]

Flex IP

http://www.xo.com/services/voip/ipflex/Pages/overview.aspx

Basically VOIP running over SIP communication protocol.

VOIP is OK when it working, however Toll quality always suffers from time to time. Toll Quality refers to the user perception on the quality of the call. Usually PRI is the best quality all around.

 

[johnpoole]

one question i like to ask the data side.. what is the up side of voip at this time? my box is running 30+ pri's over a glass ring.. we have had zero complaints and almost zero errors over the last 5 years.. we booted the switch once, and that was for an upgrade.. on the data side bandwidth is king, on this side, relaibity trumps both speed and cost..

on out voip side, cisco.. it's about a reliable as most cell phones.. unless the latest upgrade has problems, 80 to 90 percent of the time it works.. it was down once for 36 hours.. if my nortel box was down that long we would have national guard troops called out..

another draw back that most voip faces is analog dialtone.. there is a solution but it's costly and usually don't work the way you expect... another voip headache is 911.. dial 911 from some voip home phones and they may send a response team to bill gates house.. not a good thing, but fun until someone loses an eye

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[dankubala]

Very Interesting Thread. I read it because 5 years ago, I was Q6600. It does take some time to get the hang of things. I deal with our local Verizon tech's as a hands on customer. I trace a trouble back to the demarc and call it in with cable n pair...the tech's trust me and dispatch cable

As for the comments regarding VoIP...I have had a different experience. Running a CS1000s on a glass campus with 10 VLAN's on Baystack 5520's/5530's.....never had one glitch. Our bandwidth is great and the data is in constant use and dynamic.

I wish that I could say the same for the CS1000s product (r4.5)....Nortel basically put "lipstick on a pig" because it's basically an option 11c mini and I unfortunately had a CallPilot 201i platform, which is about as reliable as a sponge in a tsunami.

So, Q6600....rely on your local phone tech's to give you some inside dope...let them know that you are interested in their job and, if they're human, they'll throw you a bone.

 

[Q6600]

Wow thank you all for the amazing responses, I really appreciate them.

Heres the main reason for a push for us to move from our current voice T1's -

Local calling. Our phone and internet bills are around $8000 a month. Almost _HALF_ of that is local calling in "zone 1, 2, and 3." We get charged .04 per minute for local calling from AT&T. Our long distance volume is a fraction of that. New PRI lines and/or Flex lines are supposed to offer flat rates to basically eliminate these local charges. My employers are set on removing this .04 a min charge for local calling.

I still dont know much about all these voice technologies but there seem to be so many people here with good advice I think I will start a new thread describing our exact situation and ask for opinions.

Thanks again..

 

[DocVic]

Local calling charge of .04 cents??? Who pays for local. Maybe FX calls, but not local. You need to call your States Public Utilities Commission and file a complaint to get all of your money back. Unless you signed a contract with some smooth talking salesman, complain.
Our PBX's and Call Pilot systems have run flawless. Yes, we have had a few hard drive crashes, but once replaced, fun forever.

DocVic
Dedicated to Nortel Products till the end.
Need help? Call Me Now!

 

[Q6600]

I was told its because of the types of old T1s our PBX has to use. Its a nortel something er other in an option 61c, release 19. About 14 years old.

 

[DocVic]

Not really! The carrier is the one routing the calls when they terminate to the T-1.

DocVic
Dedicated to Nortel Products till the end.
Need help? Call Me Now!

 

[dj4020]

Upgrade will pay for itself pretty quickly if savings are $8000.00 a month. Obviously you won't be saving all of it but quite abit of it. Just my opinion.

 

[Q6600]

Its not a savings of $8000 a month thats what we pay now. The savings should be at least half that tho.

The need for newer lines to avoid charges for local calls comes from the suggestions of pretty much everyone Ive talked to, including our hardware vendor which is indifferent to carriers.

 

[dj4020]

I do agree with Doc though. Ask them to explain how a local call can be billed at 4 cents a minute. Once your interface is established its there. I'm very curious on how they can justify that.

 

[pbxn]

Not sure if your provider is trying to sell you a bridge or something, but considering a huge chunk of CO's across the country run some sort of Nortel equipt on the backend, its not a Nortel thing. If we paid for local (10,000 plus stations) we'd be bankrupt.
Time to find your provider agreements and call for a meeting with them. Long distance charges are one thing, but local charges across a circuit are a completely differant beast.

 

[dankubala]

When we had a majority of POTS lines (Q6600, Plain Old Telephone Service....[copper]) we paid 6 cents for local in PA....our LD was routed over a VPN to corporate and thru Sprint we paid 2 cents for LD....it was literally cheaper to call Shanghai than it was to call across the street and order a cheeseburger....

When I ported everything over to the T-1, the only local toll that I pay for now is the morons who can't use White Pages dot com or Google....555-1212

You definitely need to talk to your account rep to see what gives!!

 

[SpelingChampeon]

ca·hoots (k?-h??ts')
pl.n. Informal
Questionable collaboration; secret partnership:

[Perhaps from French cahute, cabin, from Old French, possibly blend of cabane; see cabin, and hutte; see hut.]

Used in a sentence: "WOW, we just found out our old telecom manager was in CAHOOTS with the local phone provider... we were getting billed 4 cents a minute for local calls...sheesh!"

Disclaimer: What you have just read is merely a poor example of sarcasm, sprinkled with baseless idiotic humor. It is not meant to harm, impeach or otherwise take an innocuous situation and make it... nocuous.

 

[DocVic]

I couldn't put it any better! Thanks!

DocVic
Dedicated to Nortel Products till the end.
Need help? Call Me Now!

 

[Q6600]

Okay... WOW.

I just talked to a few techs from our vendor (techs seem to always give it to you strait up, unlike some sales / account manager peoples) and they all agree with whats said above - we are basically getting screwed, and its because we have just been renewing the same contract every 5 years that was established 14 years ago.

Instead of going the VoIP route, I have our vendor cooking up a bid for a CS1000 unit. So... PRI lines are the way to go vs fiber?

Again, thank you all so much. Ive learned more about voice in the last month than I have in the last few years.