VoIP - Is it production ready?

[iJeep]

For our needs, getting a T1 line with VoIP is roughly the same cost as DSL and PSTN phone lines after long distance and other charges are factored in.

Part of me says to go with VoIP because when we add more lines in the future it will end up being less expensive and the dependability of a T1 is attractive (guaranteed 100% uptime). The VoIP service guarantees 99.99% uptime on their service.

Another part of me says to stick with regular phone lines because they have worked in the past. K.I.S.S. theory.

All of the information on VoIP I could find here is about a year old. A lot has changed since then.

Does anybody here use it? Any thoughts?

[webdoctor]

VoIP service guarantees 99.99% uptime on their service.

A couple of observations:

99.99% represents about an hour of downtime every year. Some businesses would consider this unacceptible. Does anyone know how reliable POTS lines are?

Does a T1 line and/or work if the power fails? Many POTS systems continue to work without power. If the power fails and you want to phone the electricity company, you could be out of luck if you're on VoIP.

[henry0]

If you run a biz do not go that way
My brother runs its own small phone Company
and has done many trials in which one I participated.

Since everyone wants it, he offers it but...

1) does not sound as good as the old stuff
2) quite often voice breaks and conn is lost

[LifeinAsia]

With VoIP, uptime does NOT always equal usable uptime. We have been using a service for several months for our business. Right now, for about half the calls we have to hang up and redial over POTS because either:
A) the call doesn't go through
B) call goes through, but the receiver can't hear anything but silence
C) call goes through, but quality is so bad neither party can hear or understand the other

The main reason we continue to use it is that we have a Korean phone number through them and most of our business is in Korea. So they can call us for the price of a local call, even though we're in the U.S. (In fact, about half of the companies we work with still think we're in Korea.) If/when another VoIP service offers numbers in Korea, we will switch in a heartbeat.

[Morgenhund]

99.99% uptime is a VERY GOOD uptime for any practical purpose. I am sure somebody who claims such an uptime will really never able to achieve it. Sorry!

I do not speak about 100%. Forget it. They're just lying.

Many businesses use VoIP to save costs, however, not exclusively.

My suggestion is -- you can install and use VoIP as extra option, if you have many long-distance calls, to save costs, but leave PSTN in place.

Are you sure your VoIP will not go down when you need to call 911?