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Selkowitz Technology | Seattle’s small business network and telecom consultant
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I’ve often knocked hosted VoIP systems for quality of service and price, but given new packages I wanted to reassess the option. When looking at phone packages you need to consider a few costs - equipment, installation, and monthly services.
One Hosted VoIP carrier recently approached me to carry their product, one interesting change is their service goes over the public internet - no dedicated T1 as with many services. This greatly reduces cost, but also increases the risk of call quality issues. We’d still recommend a dedicated DSL line for most situations - even four or five calls can consume over half the capacity of a standard DSL line and when shared with internet access that will lead to poor call quality.
For equipment a hosted service spares you the cost of the core phone system, but in most cases not the phones or installation. Really hosted systems don’t make the phone system cost disappear, it just makes it look like a seemingly small number each month.
Monthly services on a hosted VoIP phone system are on a per user basis, not per line. This carrier was $29/user for local calling. Compare that to a traditional system where we’d usually provide 1 phone line per each 2-3 people and with phone lines as low as $14.99 that means a per user cost of $5 - 7.50/user. They also had an unlimited plan for $49/user but we can sell unlimited lines at $35/line making the per user cost only $11.66 - 17.50. Common features your business may need also are monthly costs like autoattendants ($20) or on-hold-music ($15).
Bottom line what do these prices mean? Well for a business with 12 extensions buying hosted VoIP they’ll pay $383/month for local calling, an autoattendant, and on-hold music. Additionally they’d need a dedicated voice DSL for $80/month and spend $3408 on phones and installation - leading to a three year cost of $20076.
On the flip side a business that buys a Talkswitch phone system for 12 extensions would need six phone lines and features for $103/month and $4393 in equipment and installation. This comes out to a much lower three year cost of just $8101, or nearly $12000 less than a hosted VoIP system.
Even when looking at unlimited long distance, hosted VoIP costs more - $27456 for hosted VoIP vs $12313 for a Talkswitch with an unlimited LD carrier.
Bottom line is no matter the carrier, hosted VoIP services deliver less reliable service and lower call quality at a greater cost than modern phone systems!
The Author: Kevin Selkowitz
About: Kevin Selkowitz is the founder and lead consultant for Selkowitz Technology, a Seattle-area small business systems consulting company. We focus on the four major technology needs of small businesses - phone systems, phone and internet service, servers/network infrastructure, and business applications.
This entry was posted by Kevin Selkowitz, on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Phone Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response on the right, or trackback from your own site.
