What are some great equipment vendors for the small business ? For under 100 dollars the netgear nighthawk line is pretty decent as high speeds and thu put with great wifi connectivity does the job along with TP Link as the same definition ! Remember the cost as the start at around 40 dollars and as high as 400 dollars ! A good middle of the line router would be around 150 to 200 dollars but you can actually purchase one for under 100 dollars too ! Not to mention instead of rebuilding your whole network as you grow , take the wifi router and add in a cable to a switch like a netgear pro safe line and have more ports available for your internal network ! For around 40 dollars and up depending on how many ports ( Users ) You need its a pretty decent deal ! You can add in a VOIP system like 3CX or Grandstream and either build a seperate network for the voip traffic or add it into your existing network ! TP-Link and Netgear have some really great products price wise and performance wise as well !! And for low cost !!

Slowly as we get acclimated into the 3CX system , Its hard to see this system NOT being one of the top 5 in today's market . A week has gone by and we literally tested out the Remote side , the network side internal and external , Firewall , Auto Attendant ( Digital receptionist ) , Still get a kick out of the " Self Identification " Prompt ( Old School Guy here ) but it works , and so much more . As a good Engineer would do , first check was the errors and problems , and so far the Log is clean of the oh no type of errors , in fact we see nothing to get alarmed about either ! My Grandstream 1782 works like a charm with my old analog headset too ! Audio is fantastic and clear , So headset purchases are out ! I programmed 4 buttons for incoming calls on the left side and other feature buttons on the right like DND , Call forward to cell etc. I'll never have a need to utilize all of the feature sets but for the price , I have a nice black and white display that shows everything I need , incoming , out going Calls , Mistakes I make on dialing etc. I did notice one thing with the Auto Attendant that I need to address : Short DTMF tones are ignored / misunderstood on incoming calls . I never lost any calls but on a few calls I made , My IPhone for example has short tones and I noticed a few not completed calls as I attempted to dial thru my AA . I 'll be looking into this as well today . I tested out the AA from my cell network to my SIP trunk and found some calls not being understood by the AA . If a tone is too short then the AA replays the AA greeting over for a few times . I did have to hold down the dtmf key a bit longer than I expected .. I'll have more on this after I test it thoroughly but I am sure its no different than any other system today . So in conclusion , with 5 Clients running , and 1 Hard Phone that was a breeze to set up , I am impressed by just the way 3CX simplified a LOT of the set up process so that Multiple Vendors devices can be used . Some of our folks can and will use their Software Clients at Customer sites , at Home or even on the road and they still get the same type of service expected in the office ! Voice clarity is great as we will be testing out conferencing this week on Multiple local and remote client apps . As for our network , We have a FIOS Quantum network and 75 up and down on our bandwidth stream . Nothing fancy here as we do most work on the cloud like everyone else today !! As for the system issues , well , There are some differences in terms of user abilities and functionality . Proper installation procedures make it relatively simple to install most Clients / Telephones / SIP Trunks / Gateway/SBC services ! I still am trying to get over the black list device timeout issues but I will spend some time researching 3CX Forums for the answers ! With this IP-PBX software , I can get away with standard telephones and more , connect multiple 3CX IP PBX installations ( Tie Lines for remote installations included in the software ! ) for different sites and have telephones all over the country at a very low cost of ownership ! Maybe a main Corporate HQ with a few stores across the land : Install telephones if you have a private network or connect Multiple systems if you have connections into each store / outlet ! And the cost is very low in comparison to other full IP PBX systems on the market today . If you do NOT mind providing your own hardware then this system is a great choice for today's office ! I have worked on many IP PBX systems over the past 15 years ( And many digital system prior to this too ) , and a LOT of integration practices are utilizing server based / Virtual server based systems and practices to conform / simplify installations and procedures . I was skeptical years ago but I think technology has adapted today and has excelled on fundamentals in re to integration practices , VOIP engineering requirements - Software and Hardware available and readily acceptable as well as Engineering acceptance . So I hope your installation goes as easily as ours as we did some homework and got ready for the unexpected . If you need help or are having difficulties in obtaining a 5 - 9 type install with no user issues , we can help turn a bad install into a great cost effective experience for you today !! rpoctelecom.com support@rpoctelecom.com 781 563-9733

Spending about another hour today hooking up a telephone , recording my voicemail and searching thru the settings while all the time learning how to set up 3CX !! My 3CX is 90 % up and running ! I am only waiting for my SIP trunks and We are in Business 100 % . Dealing with SIP providers is like dealing with the Old Verizon or Bell Atlantic ... We'll call when we provision it .. Ugh .. Day 3 .. And all of this installation of say maybe 15 telephones could have been done in less than 5 hours !! I am amazed at how simple it was not to have to remember ports , firewall settings , network config params etc. I had my old book out with all of the SIP network ports , studying up , trying to remember my stun settings , my FQDN etc. All for nothing ! After plugging in and installing a Grandstream 1782 8 button 4 SIP account telephone on my 3CX , I was amazed at how easy it really was ! A Grandstream 1782 SIP phone in less than 5 minutes by using their discovery method ! Recorded my voicemail msg and my name and its complete ! All in less than 15 minutes ! . By Using PNP to talk to the Tel system ( Something like Layer 2 Messages - I'll have to trace the next one out and watch it on my network to be sure of the discovery method ) when the telephone is plugged in , the telephone actually is known ! I just created a user 105 , created a new Phone and adding in the Mac Address into a new phone profile I created , clicked on the bold phone and clicked provision ! Oh and I also upgraded the firmware without having to set up an FTP/TFTP/ HTTPS connection , downloading a program , testing it out and spending an hour trying to configure it to get it to work ! A window to my installed telephone using its IP Address opened on the first try via https and in the firmware upgrade page , I dragged the file form my desktop into the window and pressed upgrade ! So now on to setting up my voicemail ! While listening to voicemail prompts , One in particular , " Self Identification " message is rather interesting . I was asked to record one and had to play thru some other voicemail prompt instances and listen to the choices , to figure out that this change in prompt recordings is my name .. Ah the changing times we live in .. So all is well and we are getting more like a Telephone company each and every day now ! We are beginning to like this system more and more every day ! Oh and do NOT lose those passwords as that Demon hit again today .. Make sure NOT to continue to attempt to open a window if you do NOT know the password ! Experience , as you will feel the pain of waiting a LONG time for the system and 5 Minutes for the telephone before you can attempt another log in !! rpocteleocm.com Rich O'Connor

OK So after a long time period in between , ( 2 months / 60 days ) an update to our popular SIP based Telephone survey ! So by asking our customers , it suggests that Yealink , Snom , Sangoma, Polycom and Grandstream are probably the most popular telephones out there as of today ! There are so many telephone models and pricing along with softphone choices available and it was hard to distinguish between the best and the worst as they were all quite remarkable in terms of quality and features as one of the hardest issues are personal preference ! For a small business a consideration was buttons for CO lines , ( 4 co lines = 4 buttons ) , however , on the very same system with say a PRI , that was not really an issue as the lower cost less buttons and features were more popular ! Snom Telephones cost wise came in under almost everyone where by Yealink was a close second along with Grandstream , and Sangoma next in line - But not much of a difference at all . Installing on existing systems was not as bad as we thought it would be either ! All 3 came out with flying colors on the first attempt to install onto a foreign IP PBX Platform . We won't discuss the technicality of setting them up on multiple VOIP IP PBX based platforms in this article , only to say if you have installed SIP based products before then you can probably walk thru these with no issues as the Manufacturers have explicit documents on how to for help !! Polycom Telephones are a high quality technical choice by far but a surprise was that cost drove down the choice factor ( Middle to high end telephones ) . Cisco and Fanvil were probably in at Choice #'s 5 and 6 , again a personal decision rather than a quality issue ! So by choosing a telephone , its not as bad as you would think ! Are you using analog lines in your phone system ? If yes then the amount of buttons are an issue so that you can see each individual line coming in or out . Are you using more modern services like a 23 channel PRI or a 24 channel T1 or SIP Trunks ? Then buttons are not an issue as you do not ( and cannot ) choose an individual line as the system does that for you ! All over the market place the sale of VOIP telephones are dominated by Amazon btu there are so many great places to shop as Amazon can have some issues as well ! Be careful of some as they do not warrant nor get involved in helping you install or fix a broken phone , as today a LOT of Vendors charge for Warranties on the telephones or fees for returning / replacement of telephones. One I found does not . Snom has decided to swap problem telephones for free if you have a bad unit , and they also offer a 3 year warranty on ALL new products sold ! So experience in product and offers are key to choosing the right vendor / reseller and do not try and refer to pricing as 100% of your decision ! So take a second to see what your needs are and then discuss this with someone who can give you choices and price breaks and also great service .. RPOC Telecom sells only the latest and greatest technology from Telephony to Networking to WIFI but only what fits your needs and budget ! Our company is new but our experience is over 40 years ! Yes some of us ARE that old ! So if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to us as well ! support@rpoctelecom.com or me personally : richard@rpoctelecom.com We will make sure we get an answer to any of your questions related to anything you see on our website ASAP ! We will continue to upgrade this document in terms of product length of service and reliability as well ! Also any changes to warranty / Guarantee etc. Good luck ! Thank You Regards RPOCTelecom

Polycom is releasing a set of new products in the next week or so ! Stay tuned for details ! Also : 3CX Is here ! Alive and well ! One of our new products ! Call for pricing !! Great deals to build and maintain your own IP PBX ! Also check out our special deals on our website or peruse the store and find some great deals on new telephones form a low budget fit to a high end video telephone ! We have it all for you !! 3cx is a dynamic software based product that we now carry ! Call for pricing or visit the store for details ! We are working on publishing more details very soon ! https://www.3cx.com/blog/docs/upgrade-debian-9/ 3cx.com/ https://www.3cx.com/blog/docs/upgrade-debian-9/

We have not gotten many but Yealink Polycom and Cisco seem to be leading !! There are so many choice we want to hear form you ! So come to the forum and just let us know your choice !