My new Internet phone

Yesterday my brand new internet phone arrived.  It took the form of an adaptor about the size of a fag packet with enough technology in it to put a man on the moon.

I checked the main vendors in the UK (as far as I could)  and if anyone is interested http://dev.textor.com/info/voip.xls Pipemedia were clearly the cheapest so I went with them. 

The adaptor came in a box with no manual.  It had a US style phone socket and no converter (turned out it should have had one - they are shipping one today).  I downloaded the manual from the manufacturers web site - no problem.  Fortunately I had a converter lying in a box.

Setup was a bit daunting.  Well it was for us because we have a fixed IP.  I suspect if you didn't have a fixed IP it could have been simpler.  You plug in a regular phone and use the telephone keypad to set up the IP address and subnet mask (are you still with me? ) and then you can access the  rest of the setup via a web browser!  I kid you not - this little box had a web server in it.   The setup screen is truly horrendous with all sorts of stuff apparently in klingon. 

We have some public IP numbers plus a unix box that acts as a firewall and also does NAT (Network Address Translation) for the other PCs in the office.    This means we can have any number of PCs using the Internet using our own internal numbering scheme.  I put the phone on a public IP address but couldn't get it to work.  The Pipemedia support guy (Alex) was great and basically sorted it all out.  Everything is now working except the phone doesn't ring for incoming calls.  Alex put this down to the US/UK converter and has shipped me a new one.

Theoretically you can call any other VOIP number for free.  Our US sales guy is on Vonage, so following the instructions I dialled 848 + his number.  Didn't work.  It turns out that you have to dial some sort of Vonage internal extension number, which of course nobody knows.  So I am still working on the free calls.

I am also working on putting the phone on the internal network rather than public IP address. That doesn't work either, but I think the firewall is blocking it. 

The voice quality is fine. A little soft and maybe a little echo but absolutely fine, and no appreciable time lag.   

Conclusion

Setup is a little daunting for the average punter, especially if you have a network.  The suppliers need to do a lot of work to make this as painless as possible for the technologically challenged.  Once its in it seems to work fine.  Cost savings are appreciable but not as big as in the US where pricing is much more agressive.

Our sales guy in the US saw his monthly phone bill go from $700 to $50 so there is a big incentive to overcome any problems.   Someone is going to eat the British market with super-aggressive pricing.  If a home-grown operation doesn't then someone like Vonage or 8x8 will.  Their cost of entry to the market is tiny - they can develop the UK market with zero infrasturcutre costs. 

Our phone companies should stop thinking like accountants and start thinking like entrepreneurs.  No-one is going to go through this sort of hassle to save 2p a minute on their mobile calls.  This is not the only alternative to standard BT pricing and the others are a lot less hassle.

Long term this is the replacement for the switched telephone system.  Corporates are going to go for this big time. 

• Lower call costs
• Free calls between offices
• Better integration with their CRM system (imageine storing recording of all calls and voicemails with a customers records)
• Better integration with their sales systems.

For Small businesses

• Lower cost calls
• Virtual PBX
• Low cost integration with sales and CRM using commodity software

Real soon now.

Bob
Textor