Hi people,
I'm setting up my first business facility, and since I have no leeway with the money (I'm risking it all for a dream...But a well-calculated one...), I need to get the perfect phone system for me. But, the Telecommunications Industry may be the oldest industry that is still so completely a mystery to so many of us commoners.
My perfect phone system means:
1. cheapest Equipment Cost, and
2. cheapest Monthly Recurring Charges.
VoIP or TDM?:
I don't know if VoIP makes things cheaper in my situation. We don't have branch offices, and we don't make a lot of International, or other long distance calls - except to whatever category other Los Angeles area phones are.
Yet, we will have a DS-3 (45Mbps) line, and could also save some money on the cabling, since we could just put in single drops of the Cat5 cables.
I'm leaning to a regular old phone system (TDM-based system) because I think there might be some really cheap refurbished equipment out there - in particular the old phones. But I'm unsure if the Monthly Recurring Charges from the Phone Company will be more costly over 2 years?
Also, please not that this phone system only needs to exist for 2-3 years maximum.
And I don't mind buying refurbished.
PHONE SYSTEM DESCRIPTION:
I'll have 40 phone users, all in one location. We probably need about 10-15 lines (although anyone know if that's too much for an Engineering office environment?), and each person with an extension.
We need Voicemail and Conference calls. That's it - other features are just gravy if they happen to come with the system, but we don't need anything else.
Distribution of Phone Calls made:
Mostly, the 40 employees will be dialing each others' extensions. But of outside calls, 60% will be to another business that is located about 2 blocks away. Another 30% of calls will be to locations around the greater LA area, which is where this business is located. The rest is probably around the US and maybe a bit of International.
I really appreciate any help you guys can give on this, even if it's not a complete answer.
