Why does the campus charge for long distance calls made on VOIP phones, when calls made from VOIP services at home are free (other than the monthly service charge)?
Not all VOIP is the same. An IP-based enterprise telephone system like we have at UCI, is very different than the “free” Skype or Vonage-like services folks use at home. Let’s call these “Internet VOIP”, and call the UCI system “enterprise VOIP”. Internet VOIP runs over the Internet and offers no quality of service so the quality is “best effort” based on the quality of the Internet connection being used. It is very inexpensive, but usually not free. It does not integrate with any campus IT or telecom systems. So it can not integrate with campus voice mail, email, or any campus IT applications. It does not integrate with the campus billing system and it does not directly connect to or integrate with the Ericsson campus phone system. These Internet VOIP services are offered and administered by outside vendors. These services are not even designed to scale to the size of our phone system. The Cisco enterprise VOIP solution NACS offers is a robust system designed for large enterprises. It
Related Questions
- Why does the campus charge for long distance calls made on VOIP phones, when calls made from VOIP services at home are free (other than the monthly service charge)?
- Why one VoIP services have a certain price, and others are free of charge?
- I hear some VoIP services are free and others carry a monthly charge?
