As More Companies Adopt VoIP, The Focus Remains on POTS

A recent In-stat report noted a trend that we at VoIP Supply have tried to make a best practice for all businesses making the move to VoIP – keeping POTS lines. David Lemelin, an analyst at In-Stat found in a recent study a persistent theme among VOIP adopters: They still hold onto traditional voice communications technology for a part of their operations. Traditional voice switching, known as Time Division Multiplexing, or TDM, still accounts for 44 percent of the voice lines in those 20 percent of U.S. business that have adopted VOIP, he said.

Why Should You Keep POTS Lines?

Here are just a few reasons why you should keep your POTS lines when leveraging VoIP:

• Failover: This one of the most important aspects to consider when switching to VoIP; what is your plan for communications if your network, or Internet connection goes down? By keeping POTS lines, you ensure that if your Internet or network connections “goes down” your customers can still reach you and you can still reach them.
• Quality of Service (QoS): There are numerous times that the QoS on your VoIP lines will not be acceptable or suitable for business communications. If you keep your POTS, you will be able to easily route calls over the PSTN, when and if that happens, ensuring a pleasureable calling experience for each party.
• Local Calling: If your business makes a number of local calls each day, you will probably not realize a cost savings by using VoIP for these calls; in fact, they might actually “cost more” if the quality of the calls is sub-par. In addition, local providers are continuing to reduce their per minute charges to compete with VoIP providers.

So for all of you thinking about making the switch to VoIP or buying a new ip based phone system, there is absolutely no reason that you should forget your POTS, that is until VoIP is suitable for mission critical communications, which is still a ways away.

Michael Synder Lasted Less Than a Year

Not that this should be a surprise given all that has gone on wrong at Vonage during his tenure, but one has to wonder if Michael was thrown under the bus to “show investors” that Vonage was serious about cutting costs and making themselves into a viable, long term, profitable business. Seems that Michael is the “fall guy” here, especially since Vonage included a snippet in the press release about their plans to focus on reducing the company’s operational costs, and slashing marketing expense….signs of an investor driven move.

Although no reason was given for his resignation (so my thoughts are pure speculation), Jeffery Citron noted that, “Mike has made valuable contributions to the growth of our business and we will miss him. We thank him and wish him well in his future endeavors.” According to the press release, Jeffery Citron will act as interim CEO, as the company attempts to finds a new replacement.

This begs the question, “Who in the world would want this job?”

Sayers Media Group Launches PBX Prompts

Our sister company, Sayers Media Group, announced the launch of PBX Prompts yesterday. PBX Prompts offers a variety of standard voice prompt packages for the Asterisk Open Source PBX and custom voice prompts for your IVR, Voicemail, or in addition to our standard prompts packages. Recorded in professional sound studios, PBX Prompts’ standard, advanced, and custom voice prompts give your company a voice that is representative of your business. With no minimums, and a quick 72 hour turnaround, PBX Prompts can meet the demands of any voice prompt project.

PBX Prompts true value is in the ability for a customer to have a complete set of prompts including all system prompts and more importantly matching custom menus and on hold commercials is something that would cost a company a lot more than a couple hundred dollars if done from scratch on a one time recording. This is something that many small medium business and solutions providers have needed, but until yesterday have not been able to find.

“Over the past two years, we have heard over and over again about the difficulties many small medium businesses and value added resellers have had finding high quality professional voice prompts for Asterisk Open Source PBX systems,” said Garrett Smith, Director of Sales and Marketing for Sayers Media Group. “Based on these experiences we have created PBX Prompts with the help of these very same companies in order to deliver on a simple, easy to use, ordering interface and installation process for those who want an alternative to the default Asterisk voice for their phone system.”

PBX Prompts is currently offering voice prompts packages for Asterisk systems featuring male and female voice talents in English, English, and Spanish languages. PBX Prompts plans on launching additional languages, such as French, German, and Japanese, in the coming weeks. Prices for the current voice prompt packages for Asterisk systems range from $49.99 for select standard voice prompt packages for Asterisk systems featuring over 500 voice prompts, to $129.99 for advanced voice prompt sets for Asterisk systems that feature over 600 voice prompts. From now until May 1st, PBX Prompts is also offering FREE VoIP prompt packages for Asterisk® systems that contain 100 of the most popular voice prompts for Asterisk.

New Broadband Communications System is designed for the 10 and under small office home office

According to a recent article in CRN, Linksys will soon be releasing a VoIP phone system for SOHO users. The system is reported to be similar to the Linksys Voice System that includes the SPA9000 phone system, except it will be smaller in scale. According to Sherman Scholte, Director of product management at Linksys, “Having a broadband communication system in the house will allow [consumers] to really see the true benefits of a voice system that they couldn’t have with existing old-world cordless phone systems.”

While I am certainly not surprised to see Linksys moving in the business VoIP direction since the company was founded as a SOHO routing company, I have never really thought of the Linksys SPA9000 and the corresponding components of the Linksys Voice System to truly be robust enough for the small business. In fact the more that we work with the system, it truly is best suited for a SOHO environment. It will be interesting to see what features and functionality will be included in the Broadband Communications System, considering the LVS 9000 is pretty water-down already.

Perhaps a VoIP gateway would help?