[suckitandsee]

Hi

We are thinking of trying to move away from BT for our office phones (we work from home so its nothing too big). We have the following requriements:

• Dual mode, skype compatible non-pc powered phone
• Needs to take Landline messages (either built in answerphone or can we hook up standard answerphones to skype phones?)

Have been searching on the net since early o'clock and i havnt found anything that fits the bill - anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[TOMMOHAWK_UK]

Skype is only really any good if you are going to be making PC to PC calls - before anyone shoots me down then yes I know it can be used for other things too.

Anyway, I work for a medium sized company and have just installed a true VoIP solution for minimum cost.

Brief details are that I used trixboxCE for the PBX which is connected to a POE switch and then the switch routes via Cat5 cabling to wall sockets where the phones plug in using standard Cat5 cables. If you use a powered switch then you don't need power adaptors on your IP phones but you can dispense with the switch for small installations where you can just use a power adaptor on the phone or a POE injector connected to a switch.

trixboxCE is really configurable and I currently use voiptalk to handle my service provision over a standard 8Mbit/s broadband connection (soon to be upgraded). Basically, trixboxCE will allow you to set up whichever VoIP provider you wish to use and supports SIP trunks, IAX2 trunks, Analogue BT Lines and ISDN2e/ISDN30. Although some additional hardware is required for ISDN and Analogue Lines.

The beauty of this system is that you don't have to use the phones in the office to route calls through your PBX. Because it is an IP based system, once you have configured everything then you can unplug a phone from the Ethernet Port and plug it in anywhere in the world that has an internet connection (with an ethernet port!). The phone knows the IP address of your server so will automatically find it and register itself. It then acts as if it was in the office so you can just dial a colleagues extension number to talk to them or use the phone to dial cheap calls over VoIP. Our package (because we are still in testing) is 5 channels (5 simultaneous calls) with 5000 inclusive UK landline minutes per month. This only costs £20 per month and can obviously be extended when the need arises. The cost is slightly higher because we have allocated UK geographic numbers attached to the service. You can get it cheaper if you use 0506 numbers which are non-geographic but cost the same as a local call.

I have a truckload of advice and information I can give you if you want it. I do intend to write a setup guide at some point but there is loads of good information out there on the web.

Ken

[Beowulf1]

i would move away from looking at skype based solution to be honest.

Seimens S685IP or Seimens S475IP phones.

Both are dual PSTN & SIP phones. So landline and VOIP are contained within same phone thus giving benifits of both. (mainly so we dont have to hear home-office engineers moaning about 2 different phones in the house and cordless in style so wife-friendly for them)

Way we use ours is we have a virtual PBX with our voip provider (voipfone) but seperate accounts will do. we do it this way mainly as it allows us centralised billing and our engineers mainly work from different home office locations (and couple with just nokia N95s when out and about so can connect voip via wreless hotspots) so their very seldom in the main office. Voipfone - Virtual PBX to see if suits your needs but it works very well for us.

If everyone in 1 main office alot of the time though i would certainly go for tommohawk's suggestion of an Asterisk box and would use different phones from the above.