Telecom Market Overview

The purpose of this essay is to give the reader a quick overview of the current telecom market.

Traditional phone systems like Key Systems and Digital PBXs are going away and are being replaced by IP Phone systems. The reasons they are being replaced are:

• They are not being manufactured anymore.
• They are difficult and costly to maintain.
• There is a lack of trained service technicians.
• They are proprietary not based on industry standards.
• They lack advanced functionality.

IP Phone Systems are replacing the traditional phone systems. The IP solutions come in two offerings: Premise based IP PBXs like the Zultys MX IP PBX line and Hosted (Outsourced) VoIP Services.

Why Not Hosted VoIP

ROI does not consider Hosted VoIP a viable IP Voice alternative based on personal and customer experience with the technology. While the value proposition sounds good – one circuit for Voice and Internet, no on premise phone system to manage, one bill, more advanced features than traditional phone systems etc. – the reliability problems with the technology are ongoing and have proven to be disruptive to the customer’s day-to-day operations. Those problems include:

• Intermittent outages of the entire service bringing down every customer at one time.
• Call quality issues that can’t be resolved because the Hosted Service provider does not control the Gateways to the PSTN. (Public Switch Telephone Network) because they have outsourced PSTN access to some other provider.
• Support issues not getting problems resolved in a timely manner because the Hosted provider is understaffed.
• Advanced features not working because the servers supporting the features go down.
• Faxing does not work reliably because there is not a fully implemented fax standard in the Hosted IP world.
• Many Hosted providers are having financial problems thus you risk losing your voice services altogether if the provider has not paid their bill to their service providers and they get cut off.

Here is a testimonial from one ROI customer who was on a Hosted VoIP platform and switched over to the Zultys premised based IP solution.

We were initially attracted to the Hosted VoIP solution because we were a small company at the time and wanted more functionality from our phone system than what a traditional phone system could offer. We were on the service for several years enduring issues with outages and call quality. The last straw was when our Hosted VoIP provider (who was our third provider) had an outage for two days. Our entire phone system was down for two days. Customer calls rang busy for two days and our calls to the Hosted Provider’s service desk to fix the problem rang busy as well.

ROI came in with the Zultys system and got us switched over to another provider which allowed us to maintain our investment in our Cisco IP phones. The call quality improved dramatically when we moved from a Hosted VoIP system to the Zultys premise system. The Zultys MX has proven to be a very easy platform to administer. Fax to the desktop also works well and is easy to use. Call handling rules allow a lot of flexibility in getting calls to where they need to be (i.e., cell phone, or other extensions) and they are easy for users to implement with a little instruction. We’re very pleased we made the switch.
Clint Miller
Igniter Media
Dallas, Texas