Small Business Phone Systems????

Posts: 25 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 14, 2004 Posts: 25

I want a small business phone system that will work with four vonage lines? Does anyone know any? I can't find anything.

Posts: 243 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 18, 2004 Posts: 243

I can build you one... Would Vonage be your only phone service or would you also use land lines?

Greg

Posts: 25 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 14, 2004 Posts: 25

For now it would be one Vonage line and three land lines. However, in the not to distant future we mave move the three remaining land lines to Vonage. Are there not any off the shelf ones readily available?

This is where Vonage is really weak. They really need to provide better guidance on what systems work with their phones, whether for multi-line business needs, or ones for residential consumers. They are very vague.

Posts: 243 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 18, 2004 Posts: 243

IF your going to using mainly land lines then maybe a Talk Switch system would be better for you. I thought that if you were going to use all Vonage lines then I could be available to build a system that could integrate those lines into a small system. I'm not aware of any systems on the market that Vonage can integrate with.

Greg

Posts: 18 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Apr 08, 2004 Posts: 18

Greg -- I've installed my first Vonage phone line as a test to see if it will also work for my small business (at another location).

My dream would be to cut the land lines at work (7 right now) and use only Vonage over our broadband connection. Check my logic:
1. I plan on installing a Comcast cablemodem connection for use as the Vonage carrier. It will also act as a backup for the computer connection.
2. My current broadband is Covad DSL, and I'd rather not futz with it, as it's working.

I saw that you can build a small business phone system? My dream here would be to have:
1. All phones ring when any of the Vonage lines are called.
2. When dialing out, all calls would have a caller ID of one phone number (the primary). This does NOT work now, so if I can't get this I won't worry.
3. I will need one fax line, running from a stand alone fax machine.

What am I forgetting?

Posts: 25 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 14, 2004 Posts: 25

What you might need to consider is whether your DSL line will be able to support seven vonage lines, i.e., if it has enough total bandwidth, particularly upstream, to handle at least 4 or 5 on the phone at one time, plus surfing the net, etc. Find out if your DSL line has an upstream bandwidth cap (almost surely does) and what its limit it. Apparently you need 90Kbps for each Vonage connection, plus some excess, plus some for surfing, etc. You could also see the DSL provider would charge you to raise the upstream cap, although I looked into that with Road Runner for my business and they were going to gouge me just to go up by 100Kbps. Right now I am the only one at my office (there are four lines, one of which is a fax line, and mine is the only VOIP). I could drop the landline for the fax and use the free virtual fax that comes with my line, but it would tie up my line, plus too many people know our fax number. I guess I could get a new extra, local cost Vonage line for it and port the number over, but I have seen some varied experiences with VOIP with faxing. Also, I am concerned another VOIP line sharing my same Road Runner bandwidth might hurt my ability to talk.

Posts: 131 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 131

agingboomer wrote:

I want a small business phone system that will work with four vonage lines? Does anyone know any? I can't find anything.

Vonage does not officially support this, but I can tell you from personal experience that it works with the Panasonic KX-TD816 phone system, which accomodate 4 lines, 8 digital phones, and 8 POTS phones. The phone system does not care where the dialtone comes from.

-Mark

Posts: 131 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 131

I thnk we need a moderator in here.

Posts: 16 · Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:15 pm Post subject: You can build one?

gfoulks wrote:

I can build you one... Would Vonage be your only phone service or would you also use land lines?

Greg

Greg,
This is exactly what I would like to do. I would like to have 3 (or 4) Vonage lines, an '800' number that point to line 1. I would like to have line 1 roll to line 2, then to line 3 if they are busy. I would like to be able to answer any of the lines from either of 2 different phones. Can you build something that would work for this situation, or at least tell me if it is even possible? Thanks.

Frank

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jun 26, 2004 Posts: 20

any phone system will work with your vonage lines. like a previous poster said, the pbx or ksu does not care where the line comes from as long as it has a dial tone..

our norstar meridien is using 4 vonage and 3 pots with no problem..