Help with VOiP

[Spork Schivago]

Anyone use VOiP? Currently, we run a business. A long time ago, we got a free Google Voice number. This was great and we would use it solely for the business. Now the business has grown a bit and the Google Voice number is no longer becoming a viable option.

We cannot and probably never will be able to pass the caller ID name to the people we call from the Google Voice number. Google would have to pay to get names entered into a database that other companies pay access to for that info. I guess this isn't likely to happen. When we call someone, instead of them just seeing the Google Voice number, it'd look more professional if they saw our business name as well.

There's sometimes bugs with Google Voice. Sometimes hard to track bugs. Sometimes, I guess their service goes down. We can miss calls completely, lose business, etc.

We started looking into VOiP. Our cable modem from Time Warner Cable / Spectrum has some telephony stuff and looks like it might support VOiP. I started googling VOiP for small businesses but I see stuff where we pay companies monthly fees.

What exactly are these fees for? I'm wondering if I could just buy VOiP telephones and hook them to the cable modem and just use them that way. I don't really understand how it all works, I got the basics though. I'd imagine there'd have to be some sort of PBX system that gave the hold music, voice mailboxes, menu's for customers to push (enter 1 for blah), etc. Anyone have experience with this?

Thank you.

[diif]

Re: Help with VOiP

You can get a hosted PBX or your own.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help with VOiP

With my own PBX, I'd still need to pay Spectrum for a special line or just another telephone number? Also, PBXes don't support cell phones, to my knowledge, so I wouldn't be able to send or receive texts using that number, right?

I thought there was something about PBXes and being able to program the caller ID information on them....

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help with VOiP

What I'm wondering is if that cable modem has a built-in PBX or something. I saw the telephony section and listed stuff about DHCP, QoS, Provisioning. If I were to purchase a PBX system, like this one:

https://www.telcodepot.com/xblue-x16...iABEgL_qvD_BwE

would I still need to purchase some sort of VoIP service each month? I saw other systems for sale that say they come with 3 months free VOiP lines or something like that. Like this one here:

https://www.telcodepot.com/xblue-x25...s-for-3-months

That says it comes with:

Phone Service Included: Primary Channel
1 x Telco Depot 3 Months of VoIP Phone Service: Primary Channel 
Phone Service Included: Additional Channels
2 x Telco Depot 3 Months of VoIP Phone Service: Additional Channel

This is where I'm getting confused. It looks like both are PBXes but one mentions me having to purchase some VoIP phone service channels.

[diif]

Re: Help with VOiP

You will need a VOIP/SIP provider.
No idea about caller ID but you can whitelist/blacklist numbers.

[diif]

Re: Help with VOiP

Have a look here for an idea of how it works.
https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/20...-voip-at-home/

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help with VOiP

Have a look here for an idea of how it works.
https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/20...-voip-at-home/

Okay, that article is perfect. I tried finding something like that but didn't find anything quite as useful. I found a lot of technical articles on how VoIP works and companies selling the phones, etc.

So it looks like I'll have to pay per minute and some companies provide a certain number of minutes each month for free. I wasn't expecting this. I was thinking it'd be like a land line, monthly fee, unlimited local and long distance calls (in the same country, for example).

The article seems to be written by someone living in the UK, so maybe the two companies he mentions don't exist in the US, but now I know what to search for. I can start making some calls and see if that Empire Access offer SIP trunk lines and how much it costs and everything.

For the caller ID stuff, I just need it so when I make a call from the business, it shows the business name and number. If I can't configure it myself, so long as the company offering the service each month can provide that, we're good.

[diif]

Re: Help with VOiP

I guess the benefits depend on reliability and the amount of calls you make.
You can also have two conversations if you got for SIP. There are also SIP clients for mobiles so the land line number could be forwarded to a mobile.
I wouldn't bother with my name being revealed. Caller ID isn't a big thing over here and most of my calls are to a mobile anyway so as long as my number is revealed my customers can save my number and name me whatever they like.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help with VOiP

Here at least, it's pretty big. We get a lot of telemarketers that don't follow the rules. For example, they're not supposed to call after a certain time or before a certain time, they do. One, it's automated. And it says to speak to a representative, press 1 now, to be removed from the calling list, press 2. Every time you hit 2 though, it adds you to the list again, so if you get the call and you hit two, then you're going to get called twice a day. My mum was getting called around 37 times a day. It was ridiculous! We had to call the FCC (I think it was the FCC) and they put some sort of trace on the line. They said not to pick up and every time she didn't pick up, it'd trace the number.

After about a week, the calls stopped. But they just start up again. The FCC people say they bust the guys making the calls or get them shut down (they're in other countries) but the big guys just start up another company. Sometimes, they call pretending they're Microsoft. The people I know, if they don't recognize the name / number, they don't pick up.

I think a business looks a bit more professional if their business name shows when someone calls from that number, but that's just me I guess. We have options now available that if the person is hiding their CallerID name or number, it blocks the call. So, anyone trying to call our house that shows up as UNKNOWN for name, they don't get through. They get a message saying that this number does not accept private calls and to unblock their caller ID information and try again.

[diif]

Re: Help with VOiP

Although i have a landline most of my calls are done through a mobile to another mobile. My customers have me saved as whatever they like. No need for be to complicate things.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help with VOiP

I understand. I think a lot of people here are making the switch to cell phones only and moving away from landlines. Personally though, I'd still like the business name on the CallerID, even if it doesn't really affect business in anyway. I guess that's just me though.

What type of business do you do Diif? We finally got our electrical upgraded. It costed 3,190$! But now we have our BGA rework station up and running. Already got my first customer. Gonna have to play with my unit a bit to try and figure out how to use it proper like. But it should be fun. It's a laptop that isn't POSTing. The lights turn on but nothing at all. I suspect the GPU. It's a Sony Vaio.

[diif]

Re: Help with VOiP

I've done desktop support for 15+ years and now repair everything (or try too).
Wow. A lot of money. All the electrics in this house haven't cost half of that. And that was with the electrician here on boxing day doing first fix.
I've done more TV mainboards on my rework station than I have laptops recently.
I do have a CQ61 to do though.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help with VOiP

There were cheaper people we thought about going through. The first where a bit of scam artists. The owner and electrician came. The owner said we needed arc fault breakers for each room, which I believe is code for new construction, not old ones. Then she said we needed synced hardwired (with backup battery) smoke detector / carbon monoxide detectors on each floor. That would have cost a lot. She quoted us 2,100$ without the detectors but said for them, it was hard to estimate a price but it'd be around 50$ an hour. They would have had to tear up the walls and drill holes. I said I'd do that myself, she said if I did, they wouldn't do the work. Some shit about how they couldn't put their name out there if I was doing some of the work myself! What b.s.! Her electrician argued with her about the arc fault and smoke detectors, but she won in the end. We decided to avoid them.

CAC (Corning Appliance Corp) recommended the electrician we went through. He's very good, but expensive. And they even said that. Two of the workers there also recommended him but said the same. In the end, we felt with baby and everything, we'd rather pay extra to have a professional do it right then take a chance at some fly by night person doing it and having the house catch fire.

First, he had to unhook the wire to current meter. Then he had to add a riser pipe to the house to make the wire coming from the pole higher up. It was too close to the neighbors barn. He added a new meter box outside and the wires that were rated for 200 amp, not 150 amp.

Inside, he and his son removed the old panel (rated at 150 amp) and the old sub-panel (rated at 100 amp). He installed a new 200-amp panel that's much bigger. There where too many loads on too few circuits with the old setup, so he split the load a bit and added a bunch of extra breakers, which I think was needed. Our wire is all at least 12-2 (no 14-2). So no more 15-amp breakers! He added a whole home surge protector and a whole home lightning protector. He ran a dedicated wire to the washing machine / dryer area so our dehumidifier was no longer sharing an outlet with the washing machine / dryer. This was nice, now we don't have to unplug one every time we want to wash or dry cloths (the dehumidifier runs 24/7 and drains into the washing machine drain). He ran a 240 line just for my BGA rework station, which was a good 20 feet or so away from the breaker box. He added a GFCI outlet for my work bench. That bench has a very long power strip on it and now it has it's own dedicated outlet. He added a really nice LED light fixture above the one workbench. When I first saw it, I was like oh no, it's only 4 foot. That isn't going to be bright enough, but he knew exactly what he was doing and it provides the perfect amount of light. Really bright and that's what I wanted. It lights the entire area up.

Some of our electric equipment cost a lot of money. The BGA rework station was around 4,000$ but it came broke, so I got it for around 1,200$. I had to spend around 1,200$ to fix it. The mainframe / logic analyzer wasn't too expensive, but the modules I've bought for it are. I usually buy the modules broke and then fix them. The oscilloscope module is insanely expensive, at like 1,200$ but I got it broke. It's 500MHz bandwidth. There's another memory / state module I got that was like 300$. It supports speeds up to 1.5Gbps but I didn't realize the probes for that were like 600$ each, used. My programmable PSU was around 400$ but I hacked it to get all the upgrades for free. My Weller WX-2 with the irons where expensive. I think total, with the tips, etc, I paid around 1,000$. The Weller WHA-900 was around 600$ at the time. The preheater I bought used and got a great deal, around 200$ I think. Various meters costed a couple hundred. My DMM (the first electronic equipment I ever owned) was bought by my parents when I was in 8th grade. I think they paid a lot for it. It's Craftsman and is old, but still works well. The oscilloscope is old and I only paid a couple hundred for it (100MHz bandwidth I think). There's a few other things I've bought, like adapters to read those really small transistors with my DSA meter, PIC programmers, PLC programmers, EEPROM / SPI programmers, etc.

I think we need to contact our home owners insurance and send them pictures of the items and let them know how much it'd cost to replace them with new items of equivalent value so if the house burns down or gets flooded, it's covered.

I haven't used the BGA rework station yet to repair stuff. I've played with it a little but it's going to be a learning experience. I hope I can find the profiles for the GPU and set it all up properly. The interface is a bit weird. I believe there's a PLC controller in there or something. The company that made it just kinda bought a bunch of shit and got it work together. I don't think they actually created any circuit board themselves or anything. The touch screen has a weird interface and the instructions are in what I call broken English, so I'm gonna have to figure out how it all works properly.

I was trying to move away from computer repair and do more challenging / fun stuff (televisions for example) but right now, with the daughter, we're taking any work we can get.

[diif]

Re: Help with VOiP

That's how most of the BGA stations are made. Some have fancy features, but strip it all away and they are a bottom and top heater and a way of control. I was lucky in the fact I had a wizard from BC help me set up my profile. For that i am eternally grateful

Some of my kit. BGA station £600 with stencils, soldering iron and tips £40, TDS220 scope £130, bench power supply £70, stereo microscope £100, fluke 8600A £40. £100+ on programmers. £200ish on ICS, connectors, sockets, wires, screws and other common repair parts. I've probably spent £200 to kit this room out with shelving and benches lighting and all of the electrics.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help with VOiP

I still gotta save up for the stereo microscope, but the one I want has a camera system so we can hook it up to the PC for other people (my wife and maybe daughter when she gets older if she's interested) to see what the person looking through the microscope sees.

One of these days, I'm going to make an open source / open hardware professional grade BGA rework station where it's got all the bells and whistles using home made boards and a home made PID controller. The math for the PID stuff is hard though. I'm still working on learning that.

[jondoe]

Re: Help with VOiP

We run a disaster recovery VOIP PBX alongside our paid for system, this is built purely from "free" software (www.freepbx.org) it's a mixture of SIP trunks and PTSN. The only thing purchased for this were some 2nd hand Cisco routers which take the PTSN lines and present them as out going lines to Asterisk. It's a lovely solution.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Help with VOiP

How is that Asterisk? I like how it's free and open source. I was reading that it can be good, but sometimes, it's easier to purchase a paid for software that doesn't require a lot of configuration like Asterisk might require...do you like it? I believe I ran it once, back in high school (around 1998). I used my PC as a PBX thing and had voice mailboxes setup. People could call my PC and the modem would pick up and Asterisks would handle everything. Unfortunately, back then, hard drive space wasn't as plentiful as it is now, and a 100MB hard drive filled up really quick like with .WAV voice mails. It was still nice to play around with.

What is your paid for system? The SIP trunks and PTSNs you gotta pay for, right?

[jondoe]

Re: Help with VOiP

Asterisk is very good (it was good in '98! ), although in it's vanilla state, quite a steep learning curve. FreePBX gives you a web interface/gui, making the setup much much easier to configure. There are other GUI's available for it, I just happen to have used this one.

The disaster recovery system runs on a free SIP trunk for incoming calls, the provider makes money people calling the numbers and most of our telephone usage is incoming, so it suits us in this setup. The paid for PTSN's lines are also two ADSL lines, so that kills two birds with one stone, so to speak. The Cisco 1760 present the 2xPTSN lines to Asterisk as sip trunks to use as outgoing lines. Cisco 1760's are cheap, so cheap we have one in use and one spare on the shelf "just in case". We also use generic SIP desk phones, which saves money. The software side of it sits on a Virtual Machine with a bunch of other stuff.

The regular day to day telephone system supports 40 users across two sites, it's a software PBX called Swyx, it's very good, we've been using it for 10+ years in which time we've migrated from ISDN to SIP trunks, I can't praise it enough, but it's market reach outside of Germany/Europe is little limited. Although we have a support contract on it, I've done 95% of the administration myself, which saves me relying on 3rd parties.