VoIP alternative to $2000 per month 11 cellphone business setup?

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psk20

155 posts

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# 77078 10-Feb-2011 18:34

My flatmate's dad owns a contracting company. He has 11 cellphones for himself and his employees; which are connected through vodafone. His contract includes talkZoneZero 30 ($30 per phone so that the 11 phones can have unlimited calls to each other), and an 0800 number but most of the $2000 per month bill is spent calling other landlines and cellphones (i.e. clients).

Anyway, my question is this. Would it be feasible to save money by buying smartphones and using voIP software for this? Here are the requirements/preferences:

-11 phones, preferably not too expensive
-able to call each other a virtually unlimited amount
-cheap calling to others, including other mobile numbers (currently paying $0.30 p/m for landlines and all mobiles apart from the 11 in the talkZone
-must be reliable, work in rural areas (XT as provider perhaps?)
-must have non-terrible call quality
-must be relatively easy to use
-would be very good to be able to keep the same numbers, not utterly necessary though
-possibly keep the 0800 number?

Any advice most appreciated!

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# 437911 10-Feb-2011 18:41

psk20: My flatmate's dad owns a contracting company. He has 11 cellphones for himself and his employees; which are connected through vodafone. His contract includes talkZoneZero 30 ($30 per phone so that the 11 phones can have unlimited calls to each other), and an 0800 number but most of the $2000 per month bill is spent calling other landlines and cellphones (i.e. clients).

Anyway, my question is this. Would it be feasible to save money by buying smartphones and using voIP software for this? Here are the requirements/preferences:

-11 phones, preferably not too expensive
-able to call each other a virtually unlimited amount
-cheap calling to others, including other mobile numbers (currently paying $0.30 p/m for landlines and all mobiles apart from the 11 in the talkZone
-must be reliable, work in rural areas (XT as provider perhaps?)
-must have non-terrible call quality
-must be relatively easy to use
-would be very good to be able to keep the same numbers, not utterly necessary though
-possibly keep the 0800 number?

Any advice most appreciated!

TelstraClear is fairly cheap, and they use Vodafone for coverage....

________

Antonios K

johnr

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# 437913 10-Feb-2011 18:44

Have you checked out TalkzoneZero plus?

Connections in the group on Talkzone plans can be locked down to group calls only members including FCN's as well if need be to save on $$

jjnz1

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# 437914 10-Feb-2011 18:50

So it sounds like you want to use a mobile phone, and pay data charges for voip instead of standard calling?

IMO it is too hard too force someone to use voip especially through a mobile phone as it generally is not very stable.

To save money you need to analyse how many calls are made and to who. $200 per mobile per month is a lot of money though!

johnr

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# 437915 10-Feb-2011 18:51

Here is the link for the Talkzone plans

http://www.vodafone.co.nz/business/plans/talkzone-plans.jsp

psk20

155 posts

Master Geek

# 437926 10-Feb-2011 19:03

Ahh cool. Yah I wasn't sure whether VoIP via mobile would be quite reliable enough. Skype on my iphone certainly isn't!

..and there had been a misread of the bill, upon checking it myself, it looks like it's more like 1200 per month. And not quite at the break point where upgrading to a higher talkzone plan than the one he's on.

Anyway, thanks for the help guys.

sbiddle

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# 437945 10-Feb-2011 19:26

Simple answer to your quesiton is no. VoIP over mobile for serious use will cause no end of trouble.

DonGould

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# 438014 10-Feb-2011 21:57

Set up a 2talk account, grab a couple of android phones that will do Sipdroid ok (my 8150 is boarderline but even the 2Talk tech was impressed today) and set up a 2Deg account and start doing some testing and learning.

I agree with Steve's suggestion that this stuff isn't at production level yet. But now IS the time to be getting dirty and learning it all because the time is going to come that it becomes production ready.

My personal experience is that the voice quality is better than my normal mobile call quality, however there are issues with promptness of call connection and os integration.

$100 ARPU is creeping up there, but what other comms costs to do they have? How much petrol do they use each week? See my point?

I agree with the suggestion to do some call analysis and see what's going on. Don't know what tools VF give you to do that. You need to look for common numbers and get them in your call groups or what ever they do... if you've got a contractor that all your guys are calling all the time, then integrate, but for $100 a month savings over the group it might not be worth the hassle or your time to figure it out.

0800 numbers are very expensive. You need to understand how the guys are using them. With 2Talk you can port a local call number to do a divert to mobiles and buy bundled minutes at ~10c/min, so that's also something worth looking at. I've been considering it for some of my clients who are just paying silly amounts to call people on mobiles and get calls to their mobiles.

That's my tips and tricks for today anyway. :)

D

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freitasm

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# 438025 10-Feb-2011 22:28

psk20: Ahh cool. Yah I wasn't sure whether VoIP via mobile would be quite reliable enough. Skype on my iphone certainly isn't!

Skype is not VoIP. One can't compare Skype and SIP for call quality, control.

The problem is that users will still use voice on a mobile device, because a SIP client will still be more complicated to use than just dialing out.

When SIP is built into the dialer then things will change. Until then, you won't have a good user experience.

As for "now" is the time to get into this, true - if you are a company that needs to learn how this works to help others. If you don't have the technical staff and IT is not your main business, wait until it gets to the point where some knowledgeable people can actually help deploy it.

My technology disclosure | Digital Transformation | Enterprise Content Management | Customer Relationship Management | Data Insights, Business Intelligence and Advanced Analytics

DonGould

3889 posts

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# 438026 10-Feb-2011 22:31

freitasm: The problem is that users will still use voice on a mobile device, because a SIP client will still be more complicated to use than just dialing out.

sipdroid does integrate into the android dialler. it even gives you the option to select how to make the call or just try the voip all the time.

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# 438029 10-Feb-2011 22:35

Yes, yes. But it's a third party thing.

We are talking about deployment - are you able to create a model to deploy the software, configuration, etc in an automated manner, one that won't require each mobile phone to be worked on for half a day?

Time is money. Mobile device management is costly.

My technology disclosure | Digital Transformation | Enterprise Content Management | Customer Relationship Management | Data Insights, Business Intelligence and Advanced Analytics

DonGould

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# 438036 10-Feb-2011 22:42

Took me about 10 minutes to install and configure the software. However that was after I had set up my ATA and knew enough about how to set up the basics. I was very impressed but quite disappointed that my hardware won't run it very well.

I found the documentation on the web site was frustrating and there's very little help out there.

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# 438041 10-Feb-2011 22:44

DonGould:I found the documentation on the web site was frustrating and there's very little help out there.

And that's where costs come in... Support costs, provisioning costs, usability costs.

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hads

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# 438042 10-Feb-2011 22:44

sbiddle: Simple answer to your quesiton is no. VoIP over mobile for serious use will cause no end of trouble.

What he said.

If you're doing it mobile then you need to try and find the best deal you can with what the carriers offer.

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Niel

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# 438103 11-Feb-2011 07:18

This week a power cable at our factory blew up. Within a few hours we had a generator powering our whole factory including aircon, delivered in a container. The next evening Vector came (scheduled) and within 1h had the cable replaced and back to normal power. Large companies need that level of support.

Loosing phone services means loosing business. Not worth the risk. Consider the extra cost of a proper service provider to be an insurance policy. Don't need the extra cost until you need it, and then you can't go without it.

Skype is a leach. There is no voice server (only account server) and all the users form a network for Skype to find the path of least resistance. I'm not surprised if it gets blocked. SIP VoIP has a proper voice server with data transfer only when the customer makes/receives a call.

You can never have enough Volvos!

Niel

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# 438104 11-Feb-2011 07:19

Another way of looking for a service provider is to give your employees added benefit. Say a package like free Sky with each phone. The company pays a bit more, but the employees are happier and stays longer.

You can never have enough Volvos!

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