It’s been quite a journey researching and finding the best VOIP/SIP enabled phones. But I guess it’s pretty rewarding.

The call rates are very competitive and cheap. And if you don’t like just switch to another provider.

I bought physical phones that look like regular telephones so that the user experience is good. The latest one I bought is this: Prolink PIP 901. (S$49 only at the PC Show!)

I find that no matter what, people prefer to pick up a handset to talk to people and hear a ring-tone. Even techno-savvy people like me!

So with the first VOIP/SIP running with our Pfingo Line, we brought in the Australian PennyTel line to make international calls and then our Jakarta partners provided us with a SIP server so we now have our own internal phone extensions.

This is nirvana for a geek because finally, I can get away from PSTN.

Our entire phone system is IP based.

And everything can be controlled over a web browser, just like you would control a wireless router: login via an IP address and play around with the settings via a web-ui.

Also, if you’re wondering what’s the stage of SoftPhones, check out HUD. This is quite ultimate. The whole UI is linked to your IP phone network. You can drag and drop calls from one phone to another. You can immediately see which of your employees are on call and using what number. Voicemail notifications are built in. It’s crazy good!

Ultimate Business Phone System I Want To Have:

So after running through all the options available by researching Wikipedia. I now have enough info the architect a complete enterprise VOIP system. So this is my ultimate system:

1. Setup a IP-PBX at our Equinix Data-Centre: Will use an old P3 Server that we have to provision it. Will put in the TrixBox (Formerly Asterix@Home) system and set up the GUI.

2. Setup TrixBox: Add in IVR, extensions, call waiting, custom ringtones,  custom greets… blah blah.

3. Have one Hardware SIP Phone (Like the ProLink PIP 901 above)  in every office for the good ‘ole ringin.

4. Setup X-Lite softphone on every computer: Everyone can call using their computer. Laptops especially. Macbooks even better.

5. Pfingo Desktop provides an outgoing Fax Function: You can upload a .doc or .pdf to the software, type in a number and it wil fax out for you. (The Fax Machine is truly dead).

6. Setup Linux based softphones on our Linux desktops.

7. Setup Fring with SIP on iPhones or Nokia phones.

8. Incorporate 3G iPhones into the picture (through SIP).

9. Incorporate blue-tooth enabled SIP Phones for wireless walk around capability.

10. Video enabled SIP phones?

11. Build a Video enabled high-resolution telepresence conferencing set up.

12. Install greasemonkey scripts that detect phone numbers on web-pages and help to initiate calls.

13. Have BluePhoneElite SMS system for heavy SMS users.

Wow!

Nice right?

Finally a super full featured, ultra-comprehensive, seamless system that’s literally free. Amazing.

Why You Should Try It:

It just works. Once you get past the initial learning curve it just works.

Here we get our employees to participate in building out the IP Phone system so it’s an internal ‘hack’ project for everyone.

It saves you money.

You can have multiple lines: Singapore line, USA line, Japan line, Indonesia line.. blah blah.

It allows ultra-granular configuration. So much more settings you can play with.

Why don’t you set one up for yourself today? I’m so tempted to one day wire up my entire house with an internal IP-PBX even!

Looks like OpenSource is still a very important strategy and if well executed it still has a lot of potential.