cost savings voip /skype

Does anyone have any stats on how much money they have saved by
installing skype for a small or medium sized companies?
There was an article in the guardian http://observer.guardian.co.uk/cash/story/0,,2062580,00.html
which stated that a home user had saved 60% - "We are probably making
a 60 per cent saving on total phone bills,'
This is a substantial saving and i am interested in knowing if anyone
has had the same saving for businesses?

 

I would not basis cheaper calls for business based on skype, for the
following reasons

1- While costs are lower than BT, they are not super cheap, you may get
better with a least cost routing supplier on existing system.
2- if your looking at a VOIP route there are others that are cheaper
3- With Skype you are looking at softphone use probably, users will get fed
up of taking calls on one phone and making on different system
4- Its locked into one provider

I like skype and it maybe useful for smaller one man band companies on the
move, but it is limited, I do think having skype is usefull for incoming
skype calls
as a marketing "call us free" and showing you forward thinking, but not
great as a means to save money.

If you are looking VOIP for a business, a far better system would be to use
SIP based providers and use an IP PBX, This would allow you to
use a range of providers, and select via rules which one to use destination
X. software like TrixBox, an example product (free and open source) allow
much poweful business uses as well, such as CRM with click to call
functions, automatic recording, voicemail and lots more. If you buy hardware
you can connect your existing phone lines in,.

I use trixbox myself as homeuser, I have I have a VOIP number in, with one
provider, and use several other providers to make calls to europe at dirt
cheapprices.
If your looking for business voip probably the cheapest is voicetrading.com.

The downside to VOIP is while you may save in call costs you may need to
invest in better Internet connection to have lots of users using VOIP at
once

 

5- The call audio is compressed.

Now, while the sound is nice, and most people don't notice anything
wrong, it just isn't all there.

I'm sure that on compressed calls, there are more questions. The
listener will ask the speaker to clarify more often. To ask for
something to be repeated, or for a word to be spelt out.

Also, when I'm on a low bandwidth call, I usually find myself
concentrating really hard to hear what people are saying. I know I get
a warm ear because I'm holding the phone so close. A long G.723 call
will give me a headache [1].

As you are paying your staff, if you pay 75p an hour for them to be able
to make high quality phone calls, or 55p a minute to make crappy calls,
I know which I'd choose.

I said 55p. I know you can get unmetered calls on VoIP, but for the
foreseeable future, most people that businesses call will be to fixed
lined operators. And for internal voip, you have the cost of phones,
internet connections, servers or a service provider, setting it all up ....


But you can achieve cost savings using VoIP, but usually not on call
charges. Maybe if your traffic is almost entirely internal.

Examples, flexible routing of calls between 2 offices to make maximum
use of available staff. Yes, this has been done for years in big call
centres, but now can be done very cheaply for small organisations.

People working from home.

Realtime billing information - for instance, look at which calls your
branch offices are making to see which members of staff are chatting to
their friends, and which taking calls from customers.



[1] - yes, I can usually tell which audio codec is being used on a call,
just by listening to it. In some cases, I can say which ITSP the call
is coming through.

Tim

 

I suggest: do not use Skype for business use. Your calls go anywhere
without quality control ....

Use a good business voip provider like www.XeloQ.com for this;

I use it for years and they are very good.

henry

 

I would have to agree that Skype is probably not best for business.
ITSP's generally give you a better deal on call costs and ways to make
calls such as using VoIP hardware. I personally would recommend SNOM
phones to make calls using an ITSP as they offer great sound quality.
They work just like a normal phone, but router calls over the internet.

Many ITSP's also offer additional features for business, such as Virtual
PBX which allow you to transfer calls between extensions etc etc.

Also if you currently have numbers that people know, you can also port
these numbers to the ITSP.

Depending on your broadband speeds and the amount of traffic that goes
across this it can be an issue. If you have a quick connection, you can
normally make more than one call at at time. Remember its the upload
speed that you need to look at when using ADSL, as this is slower that
the download speed. It is also often wise to enable QoS on your router
to give hight priority to your voice traffic. Also make the right choice
of ISP, business packages normally offer better ratios to connection
than standard packages. Many also offer traffic shaping that can also
help the call quality (they give real-time protocols priority over
non-real-time such as browsing the web).

Also BT's 21C network is using SIP protocol, the same as many ITSP
(Correct me if I'm wrong) so it is real the way forward.

 

Almost certainly for us.

As most of our business is e-tail rather than through our shop door,
most of our phone calls are between 1 and 2 minutes to customers mobile
numbers. With voip we pay around 6p per minute for mobiles and get all
calls to landlines (which always total less than 5 hours/week)completely
free.

We also use the free minutes on the voip account for dialing from home
and... have voip <-> voip from home to shop which again is free any time
of day.

Don't know about Skype. Might be a good tool for incoming calls
especially if there are lots of overseas clients to be had, but VOIP is
more versatile and cheaper for outgoing calls. But I would say 60% call
saving is a fair figure for our own small business usage.

It's also saved additional PSTN Lines and cut our need for more than 2
lines down to only requiring a single PSTN/BT line for back-up ADSL for
when the cable connection goes down and outgoing Fax/card terminal
connections.

HTH
Pete