Jack,
Wow, I don't think I could keep up with all that. You are a better man than I.
I can't agree with Indy more.
First, understand that VoIP is a great solution, but it also is much more frail than your normal POTS. When was the last time you picked up your receiver and had no dial tone.
While it may cost more to have hosted, in my mind it is the only way to go. It's like doing your own brain surgery vs referring to a neurosurgeon.
It took seven months to set mine up, and I am still tweaking. All of the algorithm is done by a professional voice from Boston with music on hold. This is all that OTT Communications does. They know what they are doing. Just learning the phones is three-days task with a learning curve of two weeks (to know everything on it).
I got lucky because the wait was so long due to some glitches, I got free DSL and free phones. Given I have data on Roadrunner, there are two completely separate networks. Prior to that I split RR and had two separate networks. Most will set you up with a VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) from your switch which divides them. You don't HAVE to be separate, but it is nice.
You need to have so much bandwidth up and so much bandwidth down. A lot of ISPs will provide 10Mbs down and maybe 512Mbs up (usually much higher). Cable can change depending on when Middle School and High School let out and the Facebooks kick in. DSL is nice as it is your own line and never changes.
QOS is thrown around so the explanation is Quality of Service. Whether you provide it or your host, it throttles the bandwidth so that voice always takes precedence. If your front desk person is watching the latest YouTube video while downloading an episode of Sex in the City from Hulu, these will be shut down if it is taking too much bandwidth.
A friend of mine who does a lot of networking and telecommunications was asking me why do I host my VoIP. What do they do that you can't do? As he listed off the simplicity, I started get nauseated. Then he happened to be here when my VoIP contact engineer showed up. And, he answered the question with we provide A, B, C, D, and E, plus F, and G. Oh, said my friend. I see. One thing they do besides full non-stop free support so when your phones go down in the middle of the day, I don't have to run out of a room and spend two hours trying to fix something I have no idea how to fix.
The service is monitored 24/7 so that if it goes down, calls automatically are routed to them where we then decide to take them on a digital phone, cell phone, wait it out and send to the service.
One great story. When they were setting this up using a separate network and Time-Warner, we used it temporarily to see how it worked. We called people (with call numbers restricted except for out main line). Sounded great. But, before we went live, the engineers came out and listed at the main switch. Nope. Dropping packets. The possibility of voice sounding like a cell phone on the other side of Lake Tahoe was there. So, they circumvented RR by giving us free DSLs. Perfect.
It just isn't as easy as it sounds. This isn't Vonage. And, we are still setting up the call algorithm.
Lastly, VoIP can do many things. The auto-attendant can route calls ANYWHERE you want. Combine it with Google Voice and you will soon be on your way to no answering service at all. But, if I had to decide between the advantages of audex and routing calls here and there and having a Queue, which means a different type of autoattendant, I would go with a Queue.
This means NEVER ever missing a call. To the patient it means never getting a busy signal. It means if they want to call your office, and it is 5 pm, they know they will have a person on the phone by 5:03 pm.
