Help! Switching business phones to VOIP

[fln8tive]

Am moving my office and need to transport all the numbers--although new office is only ~1 mile away Bellsouth (who has the service monopoly) won't give me my numbers unless I pay $18 per line per month. Screw that. I already pay them several hundred dollars a month and have been with them for five years.

Is there a way to just toss the copper and run the phones through VOIP without a Masters in Systems Architecture? A friend of mine who who is offshore has such a system but when it is explained my heads spins.

[IFlyX5]

I was told that MCI offers a VoIP package for business with rollover numbers for as little as $60/month.
I plan to switch our company phone system to VoIP by June this year but haven't had time to do any research into it yet.

[fln8tive]

Well I will let you know as I do my homework. My concern is call quality. What I do know is you trade your PBX in for a Linux server. The VOIP program is run by it's own box, programs and software can be loaded to suit, etc, but still confused about extensions, handsets, etc. Note how "Sharon Stone Oral Sex" is getting more action?....not surprising.

[m31ab]

What system(s) are you looking at? If it's over the internet (ala Vonage) than the QOS is going to suck, if it's directly from the carrier, might not be so bad since they're most likely using it in the backend anyway. Most likely the endpoints(phones) have builtin QOS, I have an Avaya S8700 system at work that does all of our VOIP, and it's really nice, but the service is the usual copper T1's.

[fln8tive]

That's my concern--new location can only get 3meg upload via DSL or I have to go T1 which for us is overkill. Becomes a zero sum game. Get this, my bud in Costa Rica has his www microwaved from San Jose to the coast for about $600 per month, but the QOS often does suck.