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Magnet or Smart for business VOIP?

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  • 24-06-2009 9:38pm
    #1
    knuth
    Registered Users Posts: 469 ✭✭


    For a medium sized business with ~30 employees, who would you go for with your VOIP solution?

    Magnet or Smart?


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    #2
    machalla
    Registered Users Posts: 1,523 ✭✭✭machalla


    Personal experience of Magnet VOIP was a disaster. Loss of connections constantly, poor call quality, no account manager, no personal contacts in the place, they kept losing logged support calls, spent 3 months so far trying to port the numbers back from Magnet after this disaster, have now lodged a complaint with Comreg. Disastrous, avoid! I cannot empasise this enough, AVOID magnet!! Its hard to believe this lot used to be Netsource..

    I don't know about Smart, technically they are usually much more competent than most people in the marketplace (personal opinion, knowing at least one of the techs they employ) but with current financial problems they have I would be wary of recommending them as a long term solution to anyone. Its a bit of the devil and the deep blue sea. I'm not sure who I could recommend to you otherwise though.

    Currently a company called Diacom are doing voip in one of my clients premises, they seem ok overall. Some problems with the phone system but no catastrophes to date.


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    #3
    Johnboy1951
    Registered Users Posts: 14,011 ✭✭✭✭Johnboy1951


    lordlame wrote: »
    For a medium sized business with ~30 employees, who would you go for with your VOIP solution?

    Magnet or Smart?

    Neither .... I would be inclined to keep my VOIP provider separate from my broadband supplier.
    Get the best ISP in your area for broadband and then get the best/most suitable VOIP provider for your needs separately.

    If you get the right VOIP provider you can change ISP anytime without interfering. I would consider blueface or others like them for VOIP.


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    #4
    watty
    Registered Users Posts: 32,417 ✭✭✭✭watty


    I wouldn't use VOIP for Buisiness except from your own ISP.

    Smart or Digiweb. Both UPC and Magnet do have VOIP on their networks but I think more for ordinary consumers than a 30+ people office/Business solution. Ordinary DSL isn't enough capacity for 30 people voice + BB

    But VOIP for Mission Critical communictions is not a good idea at all unless professional install of your own Asterisk or other on site VOIP SIP Server and ISP support and ISP gateway.


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    #5
    knuth
    Registered Users Posts: 469 ✭✭knuth


    The line will be 24mb / 1mb - it will only be used for VOIP, not broadband.


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    #6
    watty
    Registered Users Posts: 32,417 ✭✭✭✭watty


    OK that will reliably manage 10 calls. 23Mbps of the download is wasted. Can't you get an SDSL line?

    3Mbps + 3Mbps SDSL can manage 30 simultaneous calls.

    VIOP is symetrical traffic


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    #7
    Henry O'Henry
    Closed Accounts Posts: 85 ✭✭Henry O'Henry


    For what it's worth, we have just gone with Magnet for our VOIP (circa 20 employees). We ported on Tuesday and apart from some initial glitches (all on the Eircom side), things have gone quite smoothly.
    Unlike machalla, I have found the support and quality of service etc, to be absolutely excellent, but then it is early days!
    Coincidentally, I moved recently from BT to Magnet for my home broadband on the recently unbundled Rathmines Exchange. Now that is a completely different story, but as it's still ongoing matter I will say no more for the moment.


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    #8
    helimachoptor
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 21,656 Mod ✭✭✭✭helimachoptor


    Lordlame, I would say Smart but I have a vested interest. We use SIP which is for want of a better term is a much more reliable version of VOIP.

    Who is your current provider?
    We can offer a couple of different ways to give you a good service.

    PM me if you want and we can discuss.
    I'm not a salesperson.

    Mods feel free to edit this post...

    I am away for the weekend from tomorrow morning but will be back online Sunday evening.

    Someone needs to take over crawlers mantle :)


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    #9
    knuth
    Registered Users Posts: 469 ✭✭knuth


    Seems Smart wants over 20k to install fibre for the VOIP setup :) Add a 6-8 week (possibly longer) installation for said fibre.

    I've heard some mix'd views about Magnet. I always wonder if this is due to folks sharing the line for BB usage too.


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    #10
    DingDong
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,438 ✭✭✭DingDong


    lordlame wrote: »
    Seems Smart wants over 20k to install fibre for the VOIP setup :) Add a 6-8 week (possibly longer) installation for said fibre.

    I've heard some mix'd views about Magnet. I always wonder if this is due to folks sharing the line for BB usage too.
    You could give upc business a call
    http://www.upc.ie/b2b/products/


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    #11
    35notout
    Registered Users Posts: 596 ✭✭✭35notout


    You could also look at Digiweb - you may not be aware, but they offer SIP trunk capability with rates comparable to Blueface but with local switches


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    #12
    machalla
    Registered Users Posts: 1,523 ✭✭✭machalla


    Henry O'Henry wrote: »
    For what it's worth, we have just gone with Magnet for our VOIP (circa 20 employees). We ported on Tuesday and apart from some initial glitches (all on the Eircom side), things have gone quite smoothly.
    Unlike machalla, I have found the support and quality of service etc, to be absolutely excellent, but then it is early days!
    Coincidentally, I moved recently from BT to Magnet for my home broadband on the recently unbundled Rathmines Exchange. Now that is a completely different story, but as it's still ongoing matter I will say no more for the moment.

    Good luck to you with it, I hope it works out better for you than me. We got onto their system with no real problems.

    Getting back out has been the nightmare, after they couldn't provide any sort of proper billing info, the bills shot up in price, then basically they refused to port the numbers back out which is the core of the complaint to comreg. Anyway I'll cease the rant here..


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