Welcome to Voipfone.
In the drop down menu below you will find shortcuts to all our Internet Telephone services, features and prices.
Simply enter the number you want to check in the
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information such as cost, destination and location for any
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Welcome to the Voipfone User Forum. From here you can find news stories and developments in Voipfone and in the VoIP industry generally.
We will also be using this space to inform you of any planned maintenance or changes to the service that you need to be aware of. Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions
Skype seriously annoyed a lot of people when they gave less than a month to have their London SkypeIn phone numbers - many their main business number - changed by 20 December.
Being with VoIPFone is a total contrast to the service that we had from Skype. The calls are crystal clear and are a joy to talk on.
We take your Safety seriously. All Voipfone customers can call emergency services immediately on sign-up.
Not every VoIP provider gives you access to emergency services it's safer to use one that does.
The UK’s first DIY, IVR system for your Virtual PBX ‘Press 1 for Sales, 2 for accounts’ etc.
Direct your customers to exactly the person or extensions they need using our Virtual Switchboard - automatically.
Bob Emmerson of Von Magazine has been putting our Virtual PBX to the test and has called it a "A Virtual PBX that Does Virtually Everything" and guess what he's right
Bob goes on to say Forget Skype and Vonage, even though the VoIP calls are free, and think PBX extensions – virtual extensions.
the result is an impressive portfolio.
The capital has become even more attractive to global businesses thanks to low-cost internet telephony
Pete Warren and Michael Streeter of the Guardian go on to say It already ranks as one of the most desirable cities on the planet to do business. But London, it seems, is set to get even bigger. In recent months.
Voipfone Call Me Back™ is a clever way of getting your customers to call you, perhaps as a way of driving sales from your web site or as part of a your customer support service.
The calls are free to your customers and very low cost to you. The button is free of charge, just help yourself to the code. You only pay for the calls that are made when the button is used.
Now, to make it even easier to use Voipfone, we have introduced a range of Plug & Go Hardware Products that are guaranteed to work with the Voipfone network 'straight out of the box'.
All our telephones and adapters are pre-configured with our optimum settings and your user details. And, unlike some service providers who lock their hardware, you can change them if you wish.
We have just introduced Call Conferencing to our
widening range of self service VoIP products
Invited conference members call in for free from the Voipfone network or from any telephone
in the world at standard 0870 prices. There’s no booking fee, no
service charge, no limits, and no nonsense.
Voipfone is a founder member of ITSPA which exists
to encourage the development of a vigorous and competitive industry
in providing voice telephony services using IP and other internet
technologies.
ITSPA sets and monitors basic customer related standards for
its members in order to ensure that customers can be confident
that they will be provided with high standards of service and
customer care.
The ITSPA Code of Practice is designed to help customers by ensuring
that they receive suitable information in advance of agreeing
to buy internet telephony services so that they can have confidence
in the way that an ITSPA member will do business with them.
ITSPA members are required to comply with current legislative and regulatory requirements supplemented by the ITSPA Code of Practice, which provides guidance and information to members and their customers.
To give customers even more confidence, in the unlikely event that a complaint cannot be settled locally, the ITSPA Code of Practice contains an easily accessible dispute resolution scheme for the purpose of bringing such complaint to a satisfactory conclusion.
Best-value business provider”
With normal telephony you can have only one telephone call on one telephone line at once. To get more simultaneous calls you have to install - and pay for - more lines.
With Voipfone that all changes. With Voipfone you can have as many calls on your ‘line’ as you and your equipment can handle.
We can help you work out what you need and how to get the most out of your VoIP service.
There are three prime considerations which dictate both the quality and number of simultaneous calls you can make or receive over your Voipfone service.
1. Your internet connection
Broadband ADSL has a lower bandwidth back up to your ISP than down from them ie it is asymmetrical. Typically, ADSL bandwidth is described as 2 or 8mbs (or increasingly more) which is the down speed.
But because VoIP is symmetrical - a telephone call is, of course, two-way, most people listen as well as talk - the major bottleneck is your upstream bandwidth which is normally only 256 or 398kbs or sometimes 800kbs.
The more bandwidth you have the more simultaneous calls you can achieve and the less interference you will have from your use of other internet applications such as internet browsing, file downloading, FTP or email (see below).
So, as a general principle, always get the fastest ADSL service you can find and afford. A business ADSL service will have a lower contention ratio than a residential one and will be less congested. Find a good ISP
- they are not all equal!
We provide our own voice prioritised ADSL service which is specifically designed for use with our network. If you are looking for a business class, broadband service look here first as we can then control the whole call from your phone into our network.
If you are really heavy users you could also consider buying symmetrical DSL - SDSL. Please contact us if you require this.
2. Your use of your internet connection
It’s worth pointing out that if you are heavy users of the internet and you wish to make telephone calls over it, something has to give. Unlike downloading a file or sending an email, a telephone call is instant and happens in real time – it cannot be delayed, slowed down or paused.
So if you wish to use both voice and data heavily you need to design your network correctly. If you are finding that your calls suffer from jitter – calls stuttering and breaking up – it is almost certainly being caused by lack of bandwidth as you voice traffic competes with other data traffic for scarce bandwidth.
If you have several people all sharing the same internet connection for voice and data and are using it heavily for both, you should consider separating your voice connection (VoIP) from your data connection (internet, email etc). This means using two ADSL circuits. This also has the benefit of giving you a back-up if one circuit fails. To obtain an even higher level of back-up, use a two different Service Providers.
It is also worth ensuring that your local network wiring is up to scratch - bad internal cabling can lead to all sorts of problems. Avoid using WiFi for VoIP; it works, particularly with devices specifically designed for it, but for PCs and softphones the encryption/decryption process adds complexity and slows things down.
Another option is to change to a codec that uses less bandwidth.
3. Your choice of codec
Since voice and sound are analogue, they need to be converted (or
encoded) to a digital format suitable for transmission over the Internet. A codec is an algorithm used to do this job; it codes and decodes a voice conversation.
All VoIP telephones, both softphones and telephones and adapters, use codecs and unless you specify which one, it will use the default codec which for Voipfone is a very high quality one.
There are a variety of different ways this encoding and decoding can be done - many of which utilise compression in order to reduce the required bandwidth of the conversation.
Reducing the bandwidth will reduce the quality of the call somewhat but will enable you to squeeze more simultaneous conversations over your connection. Getting this trade-off right is up to you!
Your choice of codec will radically affect the number of simultaneous conversations over your network so it is worth experimenting with them.
We recommend using two in particular:
1. G711a This is a very high quality codec which delivers CD quality sound – much better than an ordinary telephone call. But to do this it uses quite a lot of bandwidth – about 90kbs which reduces the number of simultaneous calls to around 3 for a standard 256kbs connection.
2. GSM This is the codec used by mobile phones and delivers the same sort of quality. It is however, highly efficient which means that you can squeeze 10 or more calls simultaneously up a 256kbs pipe. In use, the GSM codec delivers indistinguishable call quality from an ordinary telephone call.
For guidance, the chart below shows the maximum simultaneous calls theoretically possible over a perfect connection. Bear in mind, that in the old telecoms world, each call requires one line so using a GSM codec can give you the equivalent of up to 13 lines on a standard ADSL connection!
Upstream Bandwidth kbs
256
398
512
750
1024
711
codec | simultaneous calls
3
5
6
9
12
GSM
code | simultaneous calls
13
20
26
38
51
Of course, the number of possible simultaneous conversations does not define the maximum number of extensions you can have because not all extensions will be in use simultaneously. The relationship of extensions to calls is called the contention ratio and it will vary for every business.
A sophisticated call centre using call management software may require a contention ratio of almost 1:1 while a normal office may be more like
5:1 (ie only 20% of your extensions are expected to be making a call at any one time.
The only real way to work out how many extensions your network can support is to trial it - luckily both Voipfone and bandwidth is flexible and you can tune your own network to suit.
(When calculating your bandwidth requirements you also need to bear in mind that an internal call, extension to extension, counts as two simultaneous calls.)
We'd be interested to hear any users real life experience of these issues and there is a thread in the PBX forum for your views.
Other considerations
We always recommend a physical cable connection (Ethernet, cat5e) from your router to your phone or PC rather than a wireless connection. WiFi works well enough, but it adds complexity and lag, so if you can, it is best avoided for routine business use.
We are hearing good reports of the Devolo products - they use your electrical wiring so no need to cable.
Your router. Some routers are better than others and it doesn't seem to be a cost issue. Commercial routers are expensive and don't seem to help much with VoIP - they tend to try to be too clever. Our bigger customers are finding that the simple routers are the best.
A basic Linksys or Netgear (non-WiFi, non-VoIP 4 port router plus a good switch in front of it such as the HP Procurve seems to be as good as any.) If you want a router that we can guarantee works well with our service; buy the Linksys one in our shop.
We recommend using a dedicated, good quality, SIP telephone (we prefer snom). Adapters (ATAs) work very well, but they are in the end, adapters, not telephones and they offer reduced functionality over a good phone. (However, ATAs attached to DECT phones make an excellent wireless VoIP solution.)
We don’t recommend using a softphone on your PC for serious business use as their quality is never the best and your PC must be switched on all the time. Many people do though - and seem happy with the result. If you do use a softphone find a good quality mono headset for it.
Configuring your equipment correctly is vital to the quality of service you receive. Poorly configured and out of date firmware in both phones and routers is often the cause of poor call quality and the frequent un-registering of phones. Make sure that whatever equipment you are using is kept up to date because improvements in VoIP technologies are happening daily.
