VOIP - Adding low cost Internet phone lines to your church PABX
Recently we added two voice-over-internet-protocal (VOIP) phone lines to our existing 4 incoming land lines at Generation Church. One of the lines is for our Generation Buiness Network and the other, and additional line for cheap, cost effective local, national and international calls.
The company I chose was a local Gold Coast company called VtalkVoIP.
Armed with their small 2 port ATA (Analogue Telephone Adapter), we were able to plug the GBN phone line into a cordless handset and the other line into our PABX.
The way it works is pretty simple. There are three ports on the back of the ATA, one ethernet port that plugs into your internet connection and two POTS (Plain old telephone system) ports that can plug into any old telephone handset you might have lying around.
In our case, we hard wired the second of the lines straight into our PABX, so staff can make very cheap calls just by selecting line 4 on the handset.
It’s a simple way of leveraging our existing investment in our analogue PABX system, and utilizing the benefits of VOIP.
VtalkVoIP offer some excellent plans, we went for the basic $10 a month deal.
- 10 cents untimed to Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and the Gold Coast
- 10 cents per minute STD calls
- 30 cents per minute mobile calls
- VtalkVoIP to VtalkVoIP calls are free
Right now I’m working on getting QOS (Quality of Service) working on our system so that VOIP data is prioritised above normal web surfing and email activity on our internet connection.
This is important becuase if someone is downloading something big and a voice call comes through, the voice is prioritised and comes through clear and glitch free.
I’ll post more information after I get QOS working on our modem router.
technorati tags:voip, internet, phone, pabx, vtalkvoip, qos, router
